Research

We've done research on different topics. This research is covered in different topics on this page.

Bacteria

Well, how dó we use bacteria to spread personal messages between students? The easiest way out is saying that bacteria will spread them selfs from human to human and eventually will end up on the receiver of the message. Bacteria actually have a way of communicating with each other, called quorum sensing [1]. This is used to coordinate a decentralized group, like bacteria. But how could we ever make sure that every bacteria (the whole message) reaches the correct receiver? And what will happen if it reaches the wrong one? Apart from that, the message might take way too long.

Scientists managed to program bacteria to react on each other by sensing a chemical change in some of them and then emit light in a certain color [2]. In this way they could create some sort of information visualization; the bacteria could produce a color pattern showing an icon of the chemicals they were sensing. If we would be able to create such a system then we might be able to write messages using bacteria. But for personal messages we would still need to find out how to transmit the bacteria to the recipient.

Other solutions might be using insects insead of bacteria like the American army does [3] or creating an OLED display like a petri dish on which we could coordinate bacteria more easily [4].

Sources

  1. Quorum sensing @ WP
  2. Programmable cells, turning bacteria into living computers (nature article)
  3. Pentagon plans cyber-insect army
  4. OLED @ WPsimple

Below are some other sources not mentioned in the article.

Language and alphabet

The idea is that all the universities that are part of the University of Babel use one common language so that all the messages can be easily sent and understood by all students and teachers. The uttermost importance is that the language is easy to understand. Therefor such a common language has to befound. Research showed that there are already a number of artificial languages such as Esperanto, Interlingua or Ido.

According to research on the internet of all artificial language communities the one with the most speakers is the Esperanto Community, therefor we decided to use Esperanto for the University of Babel. Although the language used will have new letters to make it more international.

Partners for the teaching of the languge will be: Universal Esperanto Portal and Lernu. We used the Gooru.de website for translitering the text into the Geeorgian alphabet.

Alphabet

An alphabet is a standardized set of signs to display parts of a spoken language - it may be pictographic and display a whole picture as a symbol for a specific thing, it may be phonographic and display one sign for a syllable or ideally just one sign for a single phoneme. (A phoneme is the smallest posited structural unit that distinguishes meaning in a language.)

One language in which one phoneme is represented by one sign is the georgian Alphabet, which therefore would be an ideal choice for the University of Babel.

Letters

table with letters from the Georgian alphabet

This would be an example for a written text in the georgian alphabet:

Primer

The Primer is a digital interactive book made with nanotechnology. The Primer teaches woman how to gain confidence, defend them selfs and different sorts of social skills.

The Primer tells the stories about the real-life of the owners environment, for example the dolls the girl plays with and (fairy)tales to learn about life.

The Primer adapts to the learning pattern and speed of the reader. Mostly by changing the story as you read. When the reader questions parts of the story or doesn't understand them the Primer dynamically changes the story to explain those parts.

Every Primer has a real person behind it. A real person playing parts of the book. This is like a guardian angel.

Sources

Towers