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Fantastech Spring 2018

Scope of the Cosmos The Future of Cryptocurrency Tricorders: Fiction or Future?

The Self Driving Force

Letter From the Editor

By Zachary Cuttill

From simple machines to modern computers, technology has been a vital part of everyday life.

Levers and pulleys are essential in construction as workers move huge beams up and down. The computer is able to perform billions of calculations per second. What does the future have in store for the advancement of technology?

Supercomputers are great and all, but if they could learn on their own, technology will have

and the Giant Magellan Telescope.

Technology is also expanding within the medical field. Dian Liu’s feature article, “Tricorders: Fiction Or Future?”, sheds light on how a simple competition turned into the creation of a medical device from Star Trek that functions almost exactly as it did in the television show.

The advancement of technology isn’t only limited to phyiscal inventions. The bitcoin blockchain is

Photo of Zachary Cuttill with a spiffy fedora.

likely surpassed even human capabilities. Artificial intelligence is therefore the hot topic among researchers right now. Some forms of complete autonomy have already been invented and are being applied. Zachary Cuttill looks into the application of artificial intelligence in self-driving cars and how the future will be impacted by them with his feature article, “The Self-Driving Force.”

Astronomy isn’t exempt from this storm, either.

Tanner Hawkins compares the different types of telescopes in his feature article, “Scope of the Cosmos.” In it, he analyzes three separate telescopes that range from ground-based astronomy to telescopes that float in space: the Spitzer Space Telescope, the SOFIA Telescope,

back. Yash Patil, in his feature article, “The Future of Crypto,” explains how bitcoin will impact human society as a primary or accepted form of currency.

The future isn’t so far as one would think.

Zachary talks about self-driving cars that will be generally available by 2030. The Giant Magellan Telescope that Tanner talks about isn’t even completed yet. The Tricorder that Dian looks into is still being improved. Yash points out that bitcoin needs to be more stable before it can be widely used. Technology is taking the world by storm, and soon, these cutting edge technologies that Zachary, Tanner, Dian, and Yash talk about will be outdated and replaced by new brilliant inventions that perform the jobs better.

Meet the Authors

Tanner Hawkins Content Editor Tanner is a dedicated student who loves to rest on weekends and voraciously devour ice cream. When he’s not playing on his PS4, he enjoys playing soccer, rock climbing, backpacking, and occasionally spending time with his brother. He likes math, science, and astronomy which inspired him to write “Scope of the Cosmos”, one of the feature articles in “Fantastech”.

Zachary Cuttill Copy Editor Zachary Cuttill is someone who always “goes full throttle” in everything he does. His dedication is something he takes pride in, and he is always aiming for his goals. Zach has been gaming since he was two years old. His love of games has led him to a new inspiration - he has been working with designing technology almost as long. He built a robot by 4th grade that could nearly think for itself and designed his first video game in 5th grade. Zach’s thirst for new technology has not been quenched, and is always looking for opportunity.

Yash Patil Graphics Editor Yash is a passionate student who enjoys Math and Science related activities. He is also an enthusiastic programmer who pursues interesting problems and develops projects to help solve them in his free time.

Additionally, he participates in Science Olympiad as an extracurricular activity and mostly focuses on engineering events. Yash is always interested in new advancements in tech which is why he wrote about cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies in his feature article titled “The Future of Crypto”.

Dian Liu Fact Check Editor Dian is a highly motivated worker who always puts one hundred percent effort into anything she does.

She works smart and efficiently and prides herself on the quality of work she produces. Her free time consists of playing video games with her friends, watching Netflix, and reading books. Dian always has her eyes peeled for new breakthroughs in the biological world, which is why she wrote about a new medical device that is turning movie fantasies into reality in her article titled “Tricorders: Fiction or Future?”.

C O N T E N TS SCOPE OF THE COSMOS Professors from the University of Texas delve into the functions and technology of several telescopes

INFRARED TELESCOPES: PAST AND FUTURE A t elescope from the past and one from today are compared and contrasted

THE FUTURE OF CRYPTO The technology and uses of cryptocurrencies are explained by experts

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HOW THE BLOCKCHAIN WORKS The steps the cryptocurrency technology goes through when a transaction takes place

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TRICORDERS: FICTION OR FUTURE? Star-Trek’s famous device, the tricorder, was transformed into an innovative healthcare device by teams from all over the world

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THE HISTORY OF HEALTHCARE A timeline of history’s important health technology discoveries

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THE SELF-DRIVING FORCE Self-driving cars are gaining fame in the technological world, and experts delve into the brilliance behind them

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SELF-DRIVING CARS: PARTS AND PIECES The different technologies incorporated in self-driving cars

FANTASTECH WORD SEARCH A wordsearch with Fantastech themed terms.

FANTASTECH CROSSWORD PUZZLE A crossword with Fantastech themed terms.

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Scope of the Cosmos A Close Look at Telescope Technology

By Tanner Hawkins

Image of the Carnia Nebula taken by the Spitzer space telescope and converted to visable light from infrared.

Image courtacy of NASA

day astronomers searching for the M odern answers to mysteries about the universe have

armed themselves with a diverse assortment of telescopes, which can be found all over the Earth, in the skies, and far above our atmosphere. They produce stunning images of distant worlds, and analyze light that the eye can’t even see. Each one of these telescopes, which are remarkable feats of innovation standing alone, can work together to create a full picture of the cosmos.

Telescopes are the instruments used by astronomers to observe the cosmos. They come in all shapes and sizes and that allow them to perform their individual functions. With their light-gathering mirrors, the telescopes can collect detailed images of objects that are far Fantastech 5

too distant and faint to see with the naked eye.

Many telescopes can even observe in parts of the spectrum that the eye can’t detect at all such as infrared or ultraviolet radiation. With these diverse and complex instruments, astronomers are able to gain a greater understanding of our universe and what it’s made of.

The Spitzer space telescope is an infrared telescope that was launched into space in 2003.

The telescope was built to observe in the near to far infrared wavelengths which are given off by objects at around room temperature.

“If you were you were sitting in your room observing and the typical wavelengths where we were using Spitzer, everything would be glowing like crazy,” said Neil Evans, a professor at UT and researcher for the Spitzer team. “So that means that if you try to [do] astronomy from the ground

your telescope is glowing. Some people have said trying to do infrared astronomy from the ground is like trying to do optical astronomy where the telescope’s on fire.”

The Spitzer space telescope combats the earth’s overwhelming infrared glow by leaving the planet and residing in a much cooler region of space.

“There are two big advantages in going into space, one is that you can cool the telescope down. Spitzer was cooled down to about seven degrees above absolute zero. And this decreases the infrared emission dramatically. So you

“Trying to do infrared astronomy from the ground is like trying to do optical astronomy where the telescope’s on fire.”

-Neal Evans, UT Professor

become instantly orders of magnitude more sensitive,” said Evans. “The other advantage is that [greenhouse gases] block wavelengths of infrared from getting to us from space. So the only way you can observe in those wavelength ranges is to go above the atmosphere.”

The Spitzer was designed to use infrared because this portion of the spectrum is perfect for studying forming stars and cooler objects.

“The stars form in these clouds of gas and dust,” said Evans. “The dust is very good at blocking out visible and ultraviolet light so you can’t see these young stars that are forming and behind all this dust unless you go into the infrared where the dust becomes more and more transparent the farther you go into the infrared.” Using this technology, the Spitzer team found that the young stars only form in areas with very densely packed gas. This finding helped answer the 40 year old question of why these clouds of gas and dust form stars less efficiently than scientists expected. Using this telescope, astronomers have found answers to problems like these as the telescope observes the sky.

The Spitzer space telescope was able to provide astronomers with a view of the universe across the infrared range of the spectrum until 2009, when the liquid helium, a substance necessary for the function and cooling of the of the telescope, ran out.

“It was cooling it down to seven degrees above absolute zero. And that allowed us to work in the whole range of the infrared. Now when that helium ran out basically you could no longer work except at the shortest two wavelengths of the infrared.” Despite this loss of vision, astronomers continue to make observations with the near infrared instruments aboard the Spitzer.Another telescope used in infrared astronomy is the Straospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, Technitians add the finishing touches to the Spitzer at the or SOFIA. Unlike the Spitzer, it is a telescope NASA facility in Sunnyvale, California. Image courtacy of NASA

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The SOFIA’s telecscope peers out of the plane during a night-time test.

Image courtacy of NASA

it comes back down to the ground every night.”

Like the Spitzer space telescope, the SOFIA observes at around room temperature making it ideal for observing cooler objects.

“Things in our galaxy that are colder like a star that is forming out of cold gas, they have a lot of dust in them, so they emit more strongly in the infrared so we can get more information about them,” Finkelstein said.

“Having spectroscopy on observations at those wavelengths seriously couldn’t have been done

before.’’ stationed on earth, or rather in the skies.

Overall, scientists regard the SOFIA “It has a number of instruments so it’s got as a useful and innovative telescope. imaging and spectroscopic instruments but the “I think using that technology is a pretty cool telescope itself is built into a Boeing 747 airplane,” way to think about being able to observe things said Keely Finkelstein, a Professor at UT and that are out there in our galaxy or other galaxies is researcher on the SOFIA team. “The airplane can a unique and pretty interesting observatory,” said go up to 40,000 feet. That gets you above a lot Finkelstein. of the water vapor in the Earth’s atmosphere. So Although the Earth’s atmosphere is an obstacle then you are able to observe and detect with those to telescopes looking through it, there are still wavelengths that you can’t normally detect from telescopes like the Giant Magellan telescope that the ground here on earth.” will be built in Chile that observe from the ground.

The SOFIA’s creative system “The giant Magellan telescope is for piercing the atmosphere with one of three what we call extremely help from a 747 also helps solve large telescopes that are under an infrared astronomer’s other development. The telescope is biggest problem, keeping the trying to move from ten meters telescope cool. This is done on the which is the current state of the art to SOFIA by allowing it to restock its 24 and a half meters,” said Cynthia coolant whenever it lands.

Froning about the diameter of the “There are space telescopes new telescopes mirror. This massive that have a finite lifetime because mirror will allow the telescope to they can only last as long as the collect more light allowing for a amount of coolant you bring up. more detailed or distant image.

That is one of the advantages of The Giant Magellan telescope will this telescope over other infrared be able to perform spectroscopy telescopes,” Finkelstein said. which looks at the light emitted by “With SOFIA that you can always an object gain information about Image of planatary nebula M2-9 the substances it is made of. access it and keep updating it and adding new instruments because taken by the SOFIA telescope.

“If you shine a light through a Courtesy of NASA prism you get a rainbow on the Fantastech 7

other side. Spectroscopy is basically just a more sophisticated way of doing that. It’s just another way of dividing up the light into different energies,” said Froning. “You can also see signatures of atoms of different types of elements and molecules. They can absorb light and they create a dip in the light and you can say ‘oh that was hydrogen’.”

The Giant Magellan telescope will be able to perform spectroscopy on a truly giant scale.

“What the Giant Magellan telescope will be able to do is get spectra of multiple targets at the same time so anywhere from five or ten to a hundred or a few hundred targets all at once. And what that allows you to do is actually map things very efficiently.”

A telescope as big and complex as the Giant Magellan telescope requires a large pool of resources which means the project has to be a collaboration between multiple countries.

Model of what the Giant Magellan telescope will look like after compleation. Graphic By Tanner Hawkins.

“The giant Magellan telescope is a partnership of a number of different institutions,” said Froning.

“My team is made up of people here in Texas both at UT and the leads are at Texas A&M and we work with people in Brazil, and Seoul South Korea, and we have one of our designers who calls in from the Australian outback, and California, and we’ve now brought in people from Arizona so it it becomes a real juggling act to have everybody come together and build something like this for the future.”

The Giant Magellan telescope’s size and sophistication will be put to work in answering some big questions in astronomy.

“A lot of it’s this question of how did we get from a universe that was just some hot, fairly homogenous ball of you know hot gas to the structure that we see today,” Froning explained. “What causes stars to form? What causes these what appear to be bursts were suddenly get a whole bunch of stars forming at once and then you have these periods where there aren’t. So it’s really about watching the evolution of the universe through time to understand how we got to where we are now and what’s going to happen in the future.”

Astronomers from all over the world have built telescopes in every form and function, across all kinds of light allowing for a wide range of information.

“You use different telescopes and different instruments to study different parts of the spectrum,” said Froning, “which is why on Hubble we have this ultraviolet instrument which looks at things that are closer in although Hubble also has some infrared. And then you build James Webb to really do the infrared well and the Giant Magellan telescope will be a mix of those both optical and infrared instruments once they’re all built.”

“With all of these together you’re able to put together a picture that goes through the entire range of red light visible light to the far infrared and then with ground based telescopes we can in the radio wavelengths,” said Evans. “So one things that’s been great is to combine the data from all these different kinds of telescopes to get a full picture of what things look like.”

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Infrared Telescopes: Spitzer Space Telescope 0.85m Mirror Diameter Sunshield

The Spitzer’s sunshield was the first of its kind as it allowed the telescope to be cooled to -267.5 °C (-450 °F) while using relatively little liquid helium as coolant.

This allowed the telescope to see into the far infrared without excessive costs due to a heavy payload during lanch.

Even with these new technologies, the space telescope ran out of coolant in 2007 which left only the near infrared instruments in use.

Observes in infrared wavelengths

The Spitzer Space Telescope observes in light throughout the infrared portion of the spectrum (near to far infrared).

Infrared wavelengths cannot be seen with the human eye but are useful for observing warm objects like forming stars since they pierce through interstellar gas and dust.

The starfield in the background was taken by the Spitzer space telescope and converted to visible light.

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Background Image courtesy of NASA

Past and Future

By Tanner Hawkins

James Webb Space Telescope 6.5m Mirror Diameter

Sunshield

The sunshield of the James Webb will expand to 21m by 14 m. The sunshield is made from light and flexible sheets that are always positioned between the sun and the mirror.

Its job is to block interfering light and heat from the Sun and Earth.

The sunshield, along with the supercold substance liquid helium, allows the telescope to remain at the -220 ° C (-370 ° F) required to perform its infrared observations.

Observes in infrared to visible wavelengths

The James Webb space telescope will observe in the mid infrared to orange light in the visible band. This means it is primarily an infrared telescope, but it cannot see as far into the infrared as the Spitzer.

The James Webb will produce images with never seen before quality thanks to its 6.5 meter mirror. These images will surpass not only the quality of the Spitzer Space Telescope, but also the Hubble by many times in resolution.

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C The Future of Cryptocurrency

By Yash Patil

Much

like the dot coms in the early 2000s, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are about to explode.

Blockchains, the technology behind cryptocurrencies, are secure digital ledgers that record information about transactions and store it in a network. As cryptocurrencies become more widely used, the benefits and disadvantages of cryptocurrencies must be compared to determine optimal use cases for such systems. Some systems may not be used day to day in the United States, but certainly have applications in other countries.

Additionally, governments are beginning to embrace the technology as it grows larger and larger.

Steven Wilkinson, the founder and CEO of Austin Bitcoin, said that he first had an interest in the tangible value of gold and silver.

“Now there’s no easy way to pay an online merchant in silver,” Wilkinson said. “So I was looking some way of doing transactions or transferring value like electronic silver.”

Wilkinson saw a business opportunity in his Fantastech 11

search.

“I then came upon the Bitcoin forums and started to read into how bitcoin works,” he said.

“I realized this is exactly like what I’m trying to build.”

Though cryptocurrencies may be an inviting technology, many believe that the volatility that comes with the price of cryptocurrencies is too great of a risk take. However, it can be seen that there is a trend to the behavior of currencies as seen with the price of Bitcoin, the most well known cryptocurrency.

“It’s leveling out as we speak,” Wilkinson said.

“If you actually pull the price chart up, you’ll see that it’s starting to level out. We went through the biggest volatility in 2011. Bitcoin was trading for a dollar fifty. It went up to about thirty two dollars and back down to about a dollar fifty and far less, all within a span of about five days.”

But this trend has changed drastically throughout time.

“That’s real volatility, we had a 32 times increase in price and it fell right back down,” Wilkinson said. “Yet right now we’re coming down into just a

few percentage points in terms of volatility.”

Even though Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are becoming more and more stable, they still have a long way to go.

“Now, volatility is a big problem because if you’re going to expect people to use it day to day, and the price fluctuates 20 percent per day, you can’t have the cost of milk fluctuate that much every day,” said Steven Masley, a developer at the company Factom which specializes in using blockchain technology of cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Bitcoin for data management and security.

Cryptocurrency brings innovation to the table.

However, it is the flexibility and convenient nature of the system that allows it to compete with cash.

Cryptocurrency often sees its greatest uses in digital commerce.

“If you have cash, you can’t [directly] pay an online merchant,” Wilkinson said. “You’ve got

to cash,” Wilkinson explained. “When you hand a cashier cash, you’re pushing it in the same way as Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not something that’s pulled out of an account like a credit card. You actually have to push the bitcoin to whom you’re sending it to.”

The technology continues to innovate and progress to become more widely used. Many believe that it will become big enough to seamlessly integrate into our everyday lives.

“Ultimately, it is going to replace the entire financial system,” Wilkinson said. “Up to nation states creating their own cryptocurrency to be their currency. This whole game of centralised bankers that have been essentially running the show for centuries is coming to an end. This is the actual technology that’s going to remove that control from that few and give it back to the many.”

Though cryptocurrency may be more widely used in the future, some believe it is doubtful that the currency will replace stable currencies such

Ultimately it’s going to replace the entire financial system. Up to up to nation states creating their own cryptocurrency.”

- Steven Wilkinson, CEO and founder of Austin Bitcoin to get it into the banking system and then the banking system has credit cards, but credit cards were designed back in the 50s so they really weren’t designed for the Internet.”

This poses a problem and an unneeded liability upon the merchant.

“It’s what merchants call ‘card not in hand,’” he said. “So if there is a transaction that’s online, the merchant is essentially taking all the risks that do that business. Now of course most people are honest and most people are trying to get goods and services but it’s the small percentage that aren’t that that merchant is having their business challenged and that’s what increases prices.

That’s what causes problems with processing and things of that nature.”

However, cryptocurrencies advocate a simpler and securer approach.

“Bitcoin on the other hand works very similar

as the U.S. dollar anytime soon.

“I don’t see bitcoins fixing its troubles in any way as far as being a useful currency,” said Rhett Jones, a writer for online magazine Gizmodo who has covered cryptocurrency issues and its development for years. “That doesn’t mean it won’t be valuable, like the way crypto currencies are treated right now, but it’s not because they’re useful as a currency.”

Though cryptocurrency may not be used as an actual currency widely in the states, it still sees immense potential in economies where there is instability.

“In the states, as a currency, people don’t really see it as a better alternative in most cases because they trust the banks,” Masley said. “Yet, if you go to a place like Venezuela, where banks are unstable and the government unstable, people Fantastech 12

using it because they trust it more than their local infrastructure.”

The goal of cryptocurrency is not only to create a decentralized currency, but also to make a safer currency with less fraud and risk.

it now or I could have made it a week ago. So attaching it to a blockchain is important because blockchain gives you essentially a time scale in history.”

The technology is always being improved

This is the actual technology that’s going to remove that control from that few and give it back to the many.”

- Steven Wilkinson, CEO and founder of Austin Bitcoin “There will always be complete transparency and altered for many different applications. The because bitcoin and most cryptocurrencies have technology we see today is just the forefront of a public ledger,” Wilkinson said. “Everything is what is to come with this system of transparency public, every transaction is public. So if you ever and security. need to verify you know whom you’re doing “When you think of business with and you have the opportunity cryptocurrency and of verifying everything.” blockchain technology,” Cryptocurrency keeps a Wilkinson said, transparent record of history “using it as a through blockchains, a currency is system that makes up all kind of its first the transactions in the application, network and manages but it’s not them in such a way that its only it is impractical to falsify application. records.

Kind of “So what makes the like e-mail blockchain so secure was the is that every time you first real make one step forward,” application Masley said. “It’s linking of internet the previous one which a n d means that previous one everything now has the work it took to kind of came make that one plus the work from there. If you for the next one. It’s almost compare it to the impossible to rewrite bitcoin Internet, we’re in the because you are racing the entire early 90s where the Internet network.” will be booming in years to Graphic by Yash Patil Furthermore blockchains provide a come.” chronological order of events so that you always Blockchain technology is being implemented know what happened when. almost everywhere.

“If I give you a hash, you have no idea when I “When I think of blockchain, it’s like removing made that hash,” Masley said. “I could have made trust out of the equation,” Masley said. “So anywhere you need to trust somebody, whether it Fantastech 13

B

be a bank or a lawyer or anything like that, if you can find a way to substitute blockchain for part of that, you don’t have to trust them anymore.”

Though the future for cryptocurrency looks bright, there is still one large obstacle and question that many have. That is how governments will embrace the technology. All governments need to regulate their currencies, but how will it be done?

“Regulations are going to be done at the edge,” Wilkinson said. “Think of it like a casino. You could walk into a casino. You have your cash. You can change that cash into chips. You can go play casino games or you can hold onto the chips. It’s up to you, your choice. You can even take those chips home, wait a year and come back to the casino and continue using them. But the moment that you want to take those chips and convert it back into U.S. dollars, here’s where the regulation comes.”

It looks as though cryptocurrencies are too big of a technology for governments to ignore.

“I think they’re still sitting on the fence to

see what happens with this technology which is a good thing because it allows innovation,” Wilkinson said. “I think right now they are taking an appropriate approach, kind of hands-off to see where this technology goes. But you know they’re split, like I said you know there’s arguments for good and bad. But I think a vast majority is that this technology is going to be for the good as well as the betterment of mankind.”

The use of cryptocurrency begs the question of what will happen to the banks. The truth is, banks will not be driven out of business, but rather will adapt to the technology.

“Banks are smart,” Wilkinson said. “Most of them know that innovation is coming. It’s like when they were doing all of the accounting on paper and computers came into play, they could have pushed back, but computers made their jobs more efficient. This is the same type of situation. Banks are going to be able to utilize this technology to do the job that they are already doing, better.”

Data courtesy of Cryptocompare.

This graph details the volatility by percentage of Bitcoin since the date of its creation in 2010. Over time, the volatility has decreased and is beginning to level out more.

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How the Block B B B

A Block represents a transaction

Request

Block

A transaction is requested by a user.

This transaction is represented as a block that will later be added to the blockchain

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Validation

All the computers check to make sure the transactions are valid. 51% of the computers must agree on the validation.

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kchain works

By Yash Patil

Each block stores information about the transaction such as the From location, To location, and transaction amount.

BB B Broadcast

This transaction is broadcast to all the computers in the Peer to Peer (P2P) network.

3

Hashing

This new block is hashed (encrypted) and added to the block chain.

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Finish

The transaction is now complete.

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Tricorders: Fiction or Future?

Hea l Palm thcare i n th of Y e our Han d

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From a complicated device on an American Television show To a device that brilliantly changes the world of healthcare The Tricorder is ďŹ nding its way into reality Fantastech 17

By Dian Liu

Many Star Trek fans recognize the word “tricorder”, associating it with a device on the fictional television show used to record and analyze data, but now the high-tech device is turning into reality. Developing these futuristic devices would bring healthcare to the palm of many hands, and change lives forever.

In early 2012, the XPRIZE foundation, a nonprofit organization that organizes competitions to encourage technological development, revealed that they would be holding a contest to create a device: a tricorder that could diagnose 13 medical conditions, and monitor five vital signs.

The winner received a prize of $2.5 million, and the team that achieved second place earned of $1 million. Three hundred teams entered the

people will do that, and they won’t have diseases that get worse and worse as the patients ignore them.”

Many people use the hospital as a last resort, only going when they know for sure that something is wrong, because going to the hospital takes a lot of time and money. The average time it takes for someone to go to the doctor and back is over two hours, and costs 43 dollars in lost productivity. Instead, people can use the tricorder whenever they feel something might be wrong, instead of waiting while getting worse and worse.

“I wasn’t in it for the money, I just wanted to help people,” said Dynamical Biomarkers Group’s main leader, Chung-Kang Peng, a professor

What this device is going to do is it’s going to make taking care of yourself a lot easier...so that more people will do that, and they won’t have diseases that get worse and worse as the patients ignore them.

-Team Member of Final Frontier Medical Devices, Philip Charron 10-million-dollar global contest, and two teams emerged as winners: Final Frontier Medical Devices in first and Dynamical Biomarkers Group in second. They each had their own challenges, but both teams knew it had been was worth it, because they created a device that would make healthcare more accessible to all.

“A lot of people don’t take care of themselves because going to the doctor is inconvenient, it’s hard,” Philip Charron, part of Final Frontier Medical Devices said. “What this device is going to do is it’s going to make taking care of yourself a lot easier...so that more

of statistical physics at Harvard Medical School.

People who competed in the competition did not do it because they wanted the prize of 2.5 million dollars, but because they found that it was an amazing opportunity to create a device that could change people’s lives, and the money could fund their research and design. Money is the hardest part of inventing something, and they realized that if they competed, it wouldn’t be much of an obstacle anymore. Most people spent many late nights, even sleepless ones, trying to perfect their designs so that people’s lives would be easier.

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“I think what everyone should learn from this process is that even a small group of people can change the world, as long as they put their minds to it,” said Sonny Kohlil, the leader of the honorable-mention-winning team, Cloud DX. Everyone who was in the competition furthered technological advances, even if they only made a small contribution. Final Frontier Medical Devices, a small group of friends, managed to create a device that would affect many lives for

surface of your, of your finger, and can sense the contents of your blood.”

Every design featured incredible technology to allow their devices to measure and diagnose things from blood pressure to sleep apnea.

Many new inventions were created, and would make healthcare much easier and more simple.

“It’s not as much of the design and engineering work as it is just making sure that we’re setting up our devices to be tested appropriately and

I think what everyone should learn from this process is that even a small group of people can change the world, as long as they put their minds to it.

-Leader of Cloud DX, Sonny Kohlil the better.

“So that we can diagnose some of these diseases, we developed what we call blood sensors,” Charron said, “It’s not taking blood samples it’s actually using sensors that sit on the

The FDA headquarters are located in Silver Spring, Fantastech 19

making sure that we convince the FDA that our devices are safe and accurate, and that’s where a lot of our money and time has gone since we won the competition in April,” Charron said.

While most of the designing and creating is finished, the teams still have a long journey ahead of them, if they want the devices to be on shelves sometime in the future.

Now, many teams are still working on their tricorders, though most of them go under a new name. They plan for the health care devices to be on shelves in about ten years, and are currently testing and modifying their designs, making it safer and better, and going through many processes to get it approved. These researchers are changing the world of healthcare, one small step at a time.

Percent of Adults That Were Unable To Go To the Doctor Due To Cost

15.9 14.3 13.3

13.0

The number of adults who are too poor to go to the doctor is decreasing. With the tricorder, it will continue to decrease even further, so everyone can have healthcare.

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History O TheThe History O 1250 Magnifying Glass Invented

179 First V Devel

1500 First Successful Caesarean Section

1590 Microscope Invented

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Of OfHealthcare Healthcare

By Dian Liu

96 Vaccine loped

2006 Stem Cell ResearchInduced Pluripotent Cells

1895 X-Ray Invented

1920 Band-Aid Created

1940 Chemotherapy Invented Fantastech 22

The Self-Driving Force What the Future Holds for Autonomous Vehicles

By Zachary Cuttill

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Graphic by Zachary Cuttill

Amit Gurung in his office at ARM. ARM is a company that develops safety features in self-driving cars. Photo courtesy of Amit Gurung.

Self-driving

cars are now more than pipe dreams a grandfather would have while sitting on his porch in his rocking chair contemplating the world’s problems.

Self-driving cars, or autonomous vehicles, have many components to them, from an impressive ability to create a map of its surroundings to a computer that can make lightning-fast decisions.

Self-driving cars use laser cameras and radar to “see” the road. The computer in the car uses the input from the camera and the radar, as well as a GPS system, to construct a three-dimensional image that the computer can read of its surroundings. Using this map, the car’s computer plans a route according to a desired path, then follows it through by turning the wheel, braking, or accelerating.

Most companies have their own methods of development.

“They have their own architecture, which is

X-86 Architecture,” according to Amit Gurung, a developer in the autonomous vehicle industry at ARM. Gurung’s company designs processors for the computers in these cars, which they call ERMAS Architecture. The architecture he talks about is the design of the computer in the self-driving car. Like how Michelangelo or Frank Lloyd Wright each have their own style, so too do the individual architectures of each self-driving car. ARM’s ERMAS Architecture is, therefore, different from the X-86 Architecture that other developers use.

“Even with self-driving cars, there are various independence levels of the car,” said Gurung.

“There are levels like A, B, C, and D, and each of them have their own requirements.”

The levels of independence are known by a few names, but there are 6 accepted levels across the industry, according to the Union of Concerned Fantastech 24

Scientists’ website. Level 0 has no autonomous capabilities at all. Level 1 has certain systems that may be automatically controlled, like cruise control or automatic braking, but only ever one system at a time. Level 2 is only a slight upgrade from Level 1: the car offers two or more simultaneous systems that are automated. In Level 3, the car can take over most systems under certain conditions, but a human is still expected to take over when alerted.

Level 4 is where the training wheels come off. In this level, the car can operate fully autonomously in some situations, but not all. Finally, in Level 5, the self-driving car is completely capable of driving in any situation.

again, self-driving cars can look after the dearly beloved of families like sentinels.

“Most crashes occur because somebody’s not paying attention and one vehicle runs into another,” said Captain Rundell. “[The self-driving cars] electronically monitor distance and braking and they do so better than human beings are able to do so.”

Captain Rundell explained an example of a concern he had with two self-driving 18-wheelers driving very close to each other. In fact, according to him, one 18-wheeler was driving very close behind the other, riding in the wake of the first and therefore conserving gas. However, the computers

At about 2030 or 2035, the self-driving car will definitely be on the market.”

-Amit Gurung, self-driving car developer from ARM

“As people get older, our ability to drive changes, and it’s a real problem because over time, we have to give up our driving privileges,” said Captain Steve Rundell, an assistant in charge of the commercial vehicles portion of programs and grants in the Texas Department of Public Safety.

“Sometimes, people have situations where they can’t see as well, and maybe it’s not even due to age, but that’s something they won’t have to do anymore because if the vehicles can drive you places then you don’t need to worry about having a driver license and maintaining your ability to drive.”

Even if new teens and the elderly can drive

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within the trucks are monitoring everything, including distance and braking.

“It’s a pretty cautious setup,” he said. “But they are very safe for that than it would be if human drivers were maintaining the same sort of distances.”

Although they are still only in their early stages today, in the not-so-distant future, self driving cars will become commonplace.

“Self-driving cars are definitely on the horizon,” Gurung confirms. “I would say at about 2030 or 2035, the self-driving car will definitely be on the market.”

Graphic by Zachary Cuttill

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Self-Driving Cars:

Car’s computer is in the trunk, which uses a three LIDAR system to construct an interpretable image of its surroundings.

Radar sensors on back Fantastech 27

Parts and Pieces

By Zachary Cuttill

360-degree rotating camera that gives the most information when the computer is creating the map

Car’s cabin for passengers

Radar sensors on front

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Fantastech 29 Across Down 2. Infared space telescope that was launched 1. Tool used to see celestial bodies very far in 2003; (spitzer) away. (Telescope) 7. Medical device featured in T.V. show “Star 3. Field of science that specializes in healing Trek”. (Tricorder) the human body. (Medicine) 9. Our EZINE is about cutting edge 4. Study of celestial bodies. (Astronomy) __________. (Technology) 5. Soon to be launched infared space tele10. Infared telescope built into an airplane. scope that will produce never seen before (SOFIA) quality images. (James Webb) 6. System used to record transactions for Bitcoin. (Blockchain) 8. Self-driving (Autonomous)

Crossword Answers BITCOIN CRYPTOCURRENCY IPHONE TRICORDER

BLUETOOTH CYBERNETICS TECHNOLOGY WIFI

COOKIE GENETICS TELESCOPE

Word Search

Crossword 1 2

6

5

4

3

7

8

9

10

Across 2. Infared space telescope that was launched in 2003; 7. Medical device featured in T.V. show “Star Trek” 9. Our EZINE is about cutting edge __________.

10. Infared telescope built into an airplane.

Down 1. Tool used to see celestial bodies very far away.

3. Field of science that specializes in healing the human body.

4. Study of celestial bodies.

5. Soon to be launched infared space telescope that will produce never seen before quality images 6. System used to record transactions for Bitcoin.

8. Self-driving

BITCOIN CRYPTOCURRENCY IPHONE TRICORDER

BLUETOOTH CYBERNETICS TECHNOLOGY WIFI

COOKIE GENETICS

Wordsearch Answers

Fantastech 30