Itar-Tass / Reuters

Russian leader Vladimir Putin stands with a gun at a shooting gallery of the new GRU military intelligence headquarters building in Moscow during a 2006 visit. Last month, Putin said nations would eventually develop new types of weapons, including "psychophysical" weapon systems.

Are we on the brink of an arms race over zombie ray guns? You might think so, based on the alarms being rung over Russia's potential to create mind-scrambling weapons. But the reality is that it'll be a long time before we have to worry about super-soldiers taking over our brains.

The Americans as well as the Russians have been looking into psychotronic weapons for more than 15 years. You can find ample references to the subject on the Internet, including a feature published by U.S. News and World Report in 1997 and a report written for a U.S. Army publication in 1998.

Such weapons purport to take advantage of the effect that pulsed microwaves can have on brain activity. Some researchers have reported an effect known as microwave hearing, in which a directed beam of radiation produces a sensation of buzzing, clicking or hissing in the head. "This technology in its crudest form could be used to distract individuals," according to a declassified Army review of non-lethal weapons.

Theoretically, electromagnetic beams could cause an epileptic-type seizure, or involuntary eye motion leading to dizziness and nausea. Military researchers have also looked into using infrasound or laser beams to confuse or incapacitate a foe — but when you start going down this road, before you know it, you're talking about remote viewing, ESP and all the way-out concepts chronicled in "The Men Who Stare at Goats."

The Russian connection
The Russians have looked into these potential technologies at least as deeply as the Pentagon has, and you're hearing about zombie ray guns now because top Russian officials started talking about psychotronic weapons a couple of weeks ago. That has brought the subject back from the dead like a ... well, you know.

Moscow is planning to set up an advanced military research agency similar to the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, and Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov referred to those plans on March 22. Here's what the RIA Novosti news agency quoted him as saying during a meeting with Prime Minister (and President-elect) Vladimir Putin:

"The development of weaponry based on new physics principles — direct-energy weapons, geophysical weapons, wave-energy weapons, genetic weapons, psychotronic weapons, etc. — is part of the state arms procurement program for 2011-2020 ... We will draft the proposals for the next program by December 2012."

Putin, who begins his presidential term next month, pledged during the campaign that he would beef up Russia's military. In February, he laid out his national security plan in an article published by Rossiiskaya Gazeta. At the time, most of the news reports picked up on Putin's call for almost $770 billion in spending over the course of a decade to modernize the armed forces. But Putin also observed that the current balance of power, held in place by nuclear arsenals, could well shift in the future due to new technologies. It was in that context that he brought up the psychotronic angle:

"The military capability of a country in space or information countermeasures, especially in cyberspace, will play a great, if not decisive, role in determining the nature of an armed conflict. In the more distant future, weapons systems based on new principles (beam, geophysical, wave, genetic, psychophysical and other technology) will be developed. All this will, in addition to nuclear weapons, provide entirely new instruments for achieving political and strategic goals. Such high-tech weapons systems will be comparable in effect to nuclear weapons but will be more 'acceptable' in terms of political and military ideology. In this sense, the strategic balance of nuclear forces will play a gradually diminishing role in deterring aggression and chaos."

In the wake of Serdyukov's comments, folks dredged up Putin's reference to "psychophysical" weapons, added in some background about the research into electromagnetic mind control, and voila: the zombie ray gun. Last week, Britain's Daily Mail suggested that the guns "could be used against Russia's enemies and, perhaps, its own dissidents by the end of the decade."

The Mail also quoted Anatoly Tsyganov, head of the Military Forecasting Center in Moscow, as saying microwaves could make for "a highly serious weapon":

"When it was used for dispersing a crowd and it was focused on a man, his body temperature went up immediately as if he was thrown into a hot frying pan. Still, we know very little about this weapon and even special forces guys can hardly cope with it."

Based on that comment, Tsyganov was apparently talking about a different kind of non-lethal weapon, an analog to the millimeter-wave "pain ray" that the U.S. military has been working on for years. As we noted a couple of weeks ago, the beam of radiation can be directed at a crowd, producing a severe burning sensation on the skin that forces the target to jump away instinctively.

How fast can mad scientists work?
There are a few problems with the pain-ray technology: It takes hours to build up enough power for the beam generator, and the system reportedly works only in clear atmospheric conditions. Nevertheless, testing of the "Silent Guardian" system is continuing, not only for military applications but also for use against oceangoing pirates and rioting prisoners.

The bottom line is that Russia certainly seems to be on track to set up its own DARPA-like "Department of Mad Scientists," working on heat rays, mind-altering electromagnetic beams and heaven knows what else. But there's nothing in the comments from Putin and Serdyukov to suggest that the Russians are anywhere close to having psychotronic weapons. In fact, Putin makes it sound as if the next frontier in warfare won't be the zombie ray gun but the coordinated cyber-attack. And that's scary enough for me.

What do you think? Please feel free to register your opinion in the unscientific poll above, and the comment space below.

Update for 11 p.m. ET: A couple of commenters noted that the zombielike picture that originally accompanied this item had a caption that didn't quite square with the lore for the "Left 4 Dead" video game. The more I learned about the game, the more I saw that the picture really didn't fit. So I've put in the picture of a gun-toting Putin instead. Thanks to the gamers who pointed out the problem. If I ever play "Left 4 Dead," I'll want you on my side.

More about weapons technologies:

• U.S. military seeks 'stunning' new weapon
• Navy's ray gun disables boat with laser light
• Railgun tests could lead to super-weapon by 2020
• Military-funded brain science sparks controversy

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

None of us living today will ever get beyond our celestial backyard in real life, but there's a fleet of apps out there that can blast you through hyperspace to explore — and understand — the far frontiers of the cosmos on your tablet computer. The latest app is "The Wonders of the Universe," a multimedia spin-off of physicist Brian Cox's coffee-table book and TV documentary series of the same name.

The app, sold by Harper Collins for the iPad 2 and the new iPad, organizes more than 200 interactive articles, two and a half hours of video and hundreds of graphics to do a show-and-tell that ranges from subatomic quarks to the largest scales of the cosmic web.

To navigate through this virtual universe, you use your fingers to swipe, spread and pinch the pictures and icons on the screen.  First you select one of the cosmic scales, then you tap on a topic, and then you can watch a video or read all about what you're interested in. Extrasolar planets? Colliding galaxies? Black holes? The big bang and the big chill? It's all at your fingertips. And thankfully, there's also a tutorial that shows you how to do all that swiping, spreading and pinching.

The video clips from the show are streamed on the fly, so you'll want to make sure you have a fast wireless connection. But at an introductory price of $6.99, all that content is hard to beat, even if it a lot of it lives in the cloud rather than in your tablet.

There's lots more to the iPad universe than "Wonders." Here are four other iPad / iPhone apps I touch upon (literally!) in the video above:

Star Walk: This $4.99 app takes advantage of your tablet's GPS and compass capabilities to provide an augmented-reality view of the night sky. Want to know where to look for Venus and the Pleiades star cluster? You can either hold up your iPad and scan around for the right sight, or do a search for "Venus" and follow the pointers on your screen. If you focus in on a star or planet and tap on the "information" button, you can get quick facts about the object in question. You can also look around for the International Space Station or other satellites passing overhead.

The Night Sky: This 99-cent app doesn't have as many bells and whistles as Star Walk, but it works on the same principle: Hold up your iPad, and the app will tell you what you're looking at — whether it's a constellation or star, planet or satellite. It's also available for Android devices.

Solar System for iPad: Astronomer/writer Marcus Chown has created a beautiful $13.99 app for the iPad that presents the solar system in full, with loads of text, video, pictures and graphics. You can pick and choose your planets, and give them a spin while you're at it, or make your way progressively from the sun all the way out to the icy frontier of our solar system. As the author of "The Case for Pluto," I particularly appreciate the fact that Chown gives dwarf planets, asteroids and comets their due.

Solar Walk: The folks who brought you Star Walk have also come out with Solar Walk, a $2.99 app that gives you a 3-D virtual model of the solar system. You can zoom all the way out to the Milky Way, but it's more fun to zoom in on one of the planets and find out what's going on in real time. When you focus in on Earth, you can find out the position of major satellites in their orbits. Tap on the International Space Station and you can watch it passing over our planet's landscape. You can even click a 3-D button, put on your red-blue glasses and geek out to the third dimension.

There are lots more space-themed apps for tablets and mobile phones, including the free GoSkyWatch planetarium app, Exoplanet and GalaxyCollider. I've mentioned some of these apps previously, but what are your favorites? Feel free to share your recommendations in the comment space below.

More about science apps:

• Find new worlds on your iPad
• Scientific 'Magic' on a tablet
• App tracks the space station
• Explore outer space on your phone
• Earth Now lets you take the planet's pulse
• 'Angry Birds Space' launches gamers into orbit
• iPads would be great in space, astronaut says

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Murray Close / Lionsgate / Everett Collection

Peacekeepers escort Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) in a scene from "The Hunger Games."

The technological divide between the rulers and the ruled is at the heart of "The Hunger Games": While the good guys struggle to survive, the bad guys employ fictional gee-whiz technologies inspired by real-life frontiers. And just as in real life, technology gets tripped up by unintended consequences.

That's not to say the post-apocalyptic North America of the book series and the much-anticipated movie, opening Friday, is anything close to real life. On one level, the technologies used by the villainous government of the nation known as Panem, ranging from force fields to extreme genetic engineering, serve as science-fiction plot devices and special effects. But on another level, the contrast between bows and arrows on one side, and death-dealing hovercraft on the other, accentuates the saga's David vs. Goliath angle — or, in this case, Katniss vs. the Capitol.

Here are a few of the technological trends that provide the twists in "The Hunger Games," along with real-world analogs:

What? No cellphones?
Much has been made of the fact that the starving, downtrodden residents of Panem's districts don't seem to have access to cellphones or the Internet. Instead, they have to huddle around giant television sets to find out what their overlords in the Capitol want them to see. But if you think of Panem as a fictional tweak of modern-day North Korea, "The Hunger Games" might not be that far off the mark: You've got a leadership capable of long-range missile launches, exercising virtually total control over what its impoverished populace sees and hears. Cellphones were outlawed until 2008, and even today they're confiscated from international visitors upon arrival. Internet access and international calling are limited to the elite.

The outlook for change is mixed: Today, a million North Koreans are said to be using mobile phones, but the State Department's Alec Ross told the Korea Times during a recent visit to Seoul that "it will be very difficult for technology to drive change in North Korea, given the extreme measures that North Korea has taken to create a media blackout." That's life in Panem ... er, Pyongyang.

Genetic engineering
The most vivid special effects are connected to genetic engineering of various organisms, including humanized animals. To minimize the plot-spoiler effect, the only "muttation" I'll mention in detail is the mockingjay, which figures so prominently in the advance publicity and provides the title for the third book in Suzanne Collins' "Hunger Games" trilogy. The geniuses at the Panem high command created genetically modified birds known as jabberjays that were able to listen in on rebel conversations and report them back to the authorities. When the rebels caught onto this, they started feeding the jays false information. And when the Capitol figured this out, they left the jabberjays to fend for themselves. Male jabberjays mated with female mockingbirds, resulting in birds that could learn and repeat musical notes but not human speech.

The twist illustrates a time-honored movie maxim about genetic engineering, enunciated in the first "Jurassic Park" film: "Life will not be contained." That may be putting it too simply, but the field has certainly raised a lot of questions about how to keep genetic genies in the bottle. This month, more than 100 groups issued a call to hold back on synthetic biology until new guidelines are drawn up.

Cross-species splicing is becoming more common: Jellyfish genes have been used to give a glow to mice and pigs. Other types of transgenic cloning have made cats and dogs glow in the dark. Experimental mice have been given a "humanized" version of a gene linked to speech, and there have been humanized sheep and cows as well. These real-life muttations aren't as scary as the tracker jackers, but the movie's genetic-engineering nightmares definitely strike closer to home than, say, vampire nightmares.

Force fields
When competitors fight each other in the Hunger Games, the arena is surrounded by some kind of force field to keep Katniss and the other kids from escaping. The invisible fence pushes back anyone or anything that's thrown against it. In real life, researchers have looked into building up short-lasting but powerful electromagnetic fields to repel projectiles directed against military vehicles, but they haven't yet reached the stage where a commander could truly issue the order to raise shields.

It's more realistic to expect that future spaceship captains will use electromagnetic fields to protect their crews from interplanetary radiation blasts. One such study is being funded at Johnson Space Center as part of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program.

For years, the U.S. military has been looking into another type of force field, known as the Active Denial System or "pain ray." This non-lethal system can direct a beam of millimeter-wave radiation at a crowd, producing an extreme burning sensation on the skin. The heat ray's victims instinctively back away from wherever they're standing to get out of the beam. Wired.com's Spencer Ackerman was among a group of guinea pigs ... er, guests ... who got a taste of the pain ray during a recent demonstration at the Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.

Ackerman's conclusion was that the system isn't anywhere near ready for prime time yet, due to lingering concerns about health effects, plus the hours-long buildup time for the beam generator, plus the fact that the system doesn't really work that well under dusty, rainy or snowy conditions. Bottom line: It might be a while before the odds are ever in the pain ray's favor.

Hovercraft
The "Hunger Games" aerial hovercraft are like helicopters, only spookier. They transport cargo as well as people, and can be used for combat and covert operations as well. A real-life hovercraft might be something like the fan-driven vehicles that Moller International has been working on for decades, or a scaled-up version of the Martin Jetpack. Or who knows? Maybe the Capitol has perfected the superconducting anti-gravity effect that NASA looked into more than a decade ago. (Interest waned when it turned out that the Podkletnov Effect couldn't be reliably reproduced.) 

Surveillance society
The biggest shadow looming over Katniss and the other denizens of the Districts is constant surveillance. That's what the Hunger Games are all about: a reality-TV fight to the death, on the air 24/7, complete with sponsors and wagering. It's a popular concept in fiction, popping up in films such as "The Running Man," "Battle Royale" and "Series 7."

The Capitol's surveillance isn't limited to the games, however. Just as the contestants are being monitored inside the arena, Panem's citizens have to assume they're being monitored on the outside. In real life, meanwhile, tens of millions of surveillance cameras are being installed across the United States, and there's talk about giving domestic duties to camera-carrying robo-planes.

Hmmmm ... maybe this part of the science-fiction saga is getting a little less fictional. What do you think? Feel free to share your thoughts about the book and the movie, or about real-life parallels, in the comment section below.

More about 'The Hunger Games'

• 'Hunger Games' fire show is Hollywood magic
• Navy opens 'Hunger Games' arenas for robots
• 'Hunger Games' is also a social media game
• Stars say 'Hunger Games' movie violence justified

More movie reality checks:

• Invisibility and other 'Harry Potter' technologies
• 'John Carter' and the real-life Martian quest
• Virtual actor takes over in 'Tron: Legacy'
• Apollo 18 in fiction and fact
• 'Avatar' and the future of 3-D moviemaking
• Reality check for 'Star Trek' tech

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

The annual TED conference brings thinkers and doers from around the world to Long Beach, Calif., to mingle and take part in a cornucopia of 18-minute lectures and other audiovisual delights. The program focuses on technology, entertainment and design (hence the acronym TED) but it takes in virtually any area of deep thought you can, um, think of.

Each year, TED awards $100,000 prizes for great ideas that could use a little help. One example is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which received support in 2009 in the form of a TED Prize to the SETI Institute's Jill Tarter. Just this week, the SETI Institute kicked off a new program called SETI Live, aimed at supplementing the 13-year-old SETI @ Home computer-based search by enlisting living, breathing humans to review radio data.

At this week's TED conference, the big winner was a concept, not a person: The City 2.0, a crowdsourcing clearinghouse that's backed by the Knight Foundation. The City 2.0 is designed to enable citizens to propose ideas to upgrade their own cities, and put them in touch with the resources that can turn those ideas into realities. The TED Prize was announced last December, but details about how the $100,000 in prize money were laid out for the first time during this week's conference. This June, the money will be awarded in $10,000 chunks to the 10 local projects that are judged "most likely to spur the creation of their City 2.0."

Video from some of the other TED events have already been posted to the Web. Check out the music-playing robo-copters that were featured during a TED talk by University of Pennsylvania roboticist Vijay Kumar, and then take a look at these other clips:

In addition to the online lectures, TED attendees were treated to a variety of treats, including a project to turn their genomes into a symphony, a "second-a-day" video project and a batch of virtual-reality cyber-illusions. To get a feel for the fun, check out this trio of videos — and for more, take a spin through the TED Blog.

Finally, here's a way-too-spooky video from the future: A clip of techno-industrialist Peter Weyland's talk at TED2023, put together to promote "Prometheus," the soon-to-be-released semi-prequel to the "Alien" movie series. Feel the hubris:

More video to while away the minutes:

• Microscopic marvels star in movies
• Scientific visions that take the prize
• Must-see science videos of 2011

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Researchers are analyzing the molecular pathways that plants use for photosynthesis.

Researchers have been trying for decades to improve upon Mother Nature's favorite solar-power trick — photosynthesis — but now they finally think they see the sunlight at the end of the tunnel.

"We now understand photosynthesis much better than we did 20 years ago," said Richard Cogdell, a botanist at the University of Glasgow who has been doing research on bacterial photosynthesis for more than 30 years. He and three colleagues discussed their efforts to tweak the process that powers the world's plant life today in Vancouver, Canada, during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The researchers are taking different approaches to the challenge, but what they have in common is their search for ways to get something extra out of the biochemical process that uses sunlight to turn carbon dioxide and water into sugar and oxygen. "You can really view photosynthesis as an assembly line with about 168 steps," said Steve Long, head of the University of Illinois' Photosynthesis and Atmospheric Change Laboratory.

Revving up Rubisco
Howard Griffiths, a plant physiologist at the University of Cambridge, just wants to make improvements in one section of that assembly line. His research focuses on ways to get more power out of the part of the process driven by an enzyme called Rubisco. He said he's trying to do what many auto mechanics have done to make their engines run more efficiently: "You turbocharge it."

Some plants, such as sugar cane and corn, already have a turbocharged Rubisco engine, thanks to a molecular pathway known as C4. Geneticists believe the C4 pathway started playing a significant role in plant physiology in just the past 10 million years or so. Now Griffiths is looking into strategies to add the C4 turbocharger to rice, which ranks among the world's most widely planted staple crops.

The new cellular machinery might be packaged in a micro-compartment that operates within the plant cell. That's the way biochemical turbochargers work in algae and cyanobacteria. Griffiths and his colleagues are looking at ways to create similar micro-compartments for higher plants. The payoff would come in the form of more efficient carbon dioxide conversion, with higher crop productivity as a result. "For a given amount of carbon gain, the plant uses less water," Griffiths said.

Making the grid more efficient
Anne K. Jones, a biochemist at Arizona State University, wants to make use of the power that goes to waste during photosynthesis. On a sunny day, a plant's molecular machinery generates more electrons than the Rubisco carbohydrate-producing engine can handle. "A lot of those electrons get thrown away," she said.

In this sense, photosynthesis is like "a badly connected electrical grid," Jones said. She's studying ways to use biological nanowires to transfer the extra energy from the light-harvesting cell into another cell that's genetically engineered to produce fuel or food. The nanowires would be analogous to electrical transmission lines, distributing power from one part of the grid to another.

Jones said filaments found on the surface of many bacterial species, known as pili, could be adapted for this purpose. Other researchers have already been looking into using those filaments as the basis for bioelectronic circuits.

"Components in future systems need not even be biological, so long as they interface with the wires developed in this project, paving the way for hybrid biological/inorganic photosynthetic systems," Jones explained in an abstract for her presentation.

Creating an artificial leaf
Jones' research meshes with Cogdell's efforts to adapt the chemistry of photosynthesis ujsing synthetic biology. Cogdell's project, backed by Britain's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, is aimed at developing an artificial leaf that produces a dense, portable fuel you could put in your car.

"We would aim to produce hydrocarbon fuel from carbon dioxide," he said. His favorite candidate is terpene, the main ingredient in the plant resins that are today distilled into turpentine. Under the right conditions, terpene behaves "rather like octane," Cogdell said.

He envisions a process in which carbon dioxide and water are chemically processed to produce a scummy sheen of terpene, which could be skimmed off and turned into fuel. Even though the end product is a hydrocarbon, the process would be carbon-neutral because of the CO2 capture, Cogdell said.

"We can't do it yet, but we have a dream," he told me.

Whether the future belongs to artificial leaves, or nanowired bacteria, or turbocharged rice, all these researchers believe that coming up with a better way to turn sunlight into energy is a crucial challenge for the next generation. They estimated that there was only a 30- to 50-year window for completing the transition from the fossil-fuel era to the age of total renewable energy.

Griffiths said the next generation will need more food as well as more fuel. He referred to the "green revolution" that has transformed global agriculture over the past half-century, and added that "what we now need is a new green revolution for the next 50 years."

Cogdell echoed that view: "This is one of the grand challenges that mankind faces," he said.

Do you agree? Which path will lead us out of the energy crunch, the climate-change conundrum and the fuel-vs.-food debate we're dealing with today? Please feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

More on the future of plants:

• 'Artificial leaf' makes real fuel
• Mimicking plant evolution proves fruitful
• Chinese automaker suggests photosynthesizing car
• Six green-energy ideas so crazy they just might work

More from the AAAS meeting in Vancouver:

• Answers ahead for physics' deepest mysteries
• Scientists revive sounds of Stonehenge and other sacred spaces
• Gas-drilling gaffes aren't unique to fracking, study says 

Alan Boyle is science editor at msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding the Cosmic Log Google+ page to your circles. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Equinox Graphics

Clusters of entangled qubits, shown in this artistic visualization, could allow remote quantum computing to be performed on a server while keeping the contents and results hidden from the remote server.

If the future is heading toward "cloud computing," where most of your data lives on someone else's server, can you trust the cloud to keep a secret? Researchers say they've found a way to guarantee that your information will be secure in the cloud, using quantum entanglement.

The technique is called blind quantum computing, and it adds one more piece to a puzzle that could eventually be assembled into an entirely new infrastructure for data processing. Theoretically, quantum computers could outdo classical computers when it comes to making weather predictions, simulating biological processes, analyzing chemical reactions and, not incidentally, deciphering secret codes. Data security could become an even bigger issue than it is today.

Whom do you trust?
Today, most of your computing power probably resides on the device you're using, whether it's a desktop or a smartphone. If you send secure data someplace else, those bits are probably encrypted using classical mathematical techniques. They're tough codes to break, but they're not unbreakable. In fact, computer scientists say quantum computers might be well-suited for cracking today's classical codes.

At the same time, there's a trend toward developing devices that shift more of the computing power onto big servers. You would still use your tablet or smartphone or netbook for input and output, but the information is stored and processed as part of a huge cloud of bits on the server. That's the idea behind the much-debated cloud computing approach.

How sure can you be that the folks who manage the cloud won't meddle with your data? And could a malicious cloud client meddle with the central server? Such questions are tricky now, and they could get trickier if quantum computing takes hold, according to an international research team led by Stefanie Barz of the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology at the University of Vienna and the Austria-based Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information.

In this week's issue of the journal Science, Barz and her colleagues note that quantum computers will be so complex that there may be only a few of them in operation at specialized facilities around the world.

"A key challenge in using such central quantum computers is enabling a quantum computation on a remote server while keeping the client's data hidden from the server," they write.

Demonstrating blind computing
The researchers worked out a system to entangle photons of light that were generated by a nonlinear crystal, and then "process" those entangled photons on an experimental setup of beam splitters, filters and couplers. The photons served as quantum bits, or qubits, to be manipulated in two types of quantum calculations (Deutsch's algorithm and Grover's search).

In this scenario, the person who provided the qubits knows their initial entangled state, and can thus decipher the entangled outcome. But the company that does the data processing wouldn't know how the qubits were entangled — and thus could not even try to decode the qubits without essentially destroying them. As far as it's concerned, all those qubits look like a totally random hodgepodge. What's more, the system has a built-in verification scheme.

"By inspecting the output, you can know if the company really has a quantum computer, without disclosing your algorithm, the input, or indeed the output," the University of Oxford's Vlatko Vedral said in a Science commentary on the research. "The computation is thus 'doubly' blind."

Barz and her colleagues say there are still some technical challenges to be overcome. for example, it's theoretically possible for some of the photons emitted while preparing the qubits to reveal information about the "blind" phase of the calculation. Also, it's important to have a high-fidelity, low-signal-loss system for processing the qubits — whether they consist of photons with different polarizations, or electrons with different spins. But however the quantum computing puzzle is put together, the researchers say their experiments will have contributed a key piece.

"Our demonstration is crucial for unconditionally secure quantum cloud computing," they say, "and might become a key ingredient for real-life applications, especially when considering the challenges of making powerful quantum computers widely available."

More perspectives on the research:

• EurekAlert: Quantum physics enables secure cloud computing
• New Scientist: Quantum computer is blind to its own bits
• BBC: Quantum computing could head to 'the cloud'
• PopSci: Quantum computing will allow secure calculation

More about quantum computing:

• A quantum leap in computing
• Tales from the quantum frontier
• Spooky quantum entanglement disturbed
• Four-atom-wide wire may herald tiny computers

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

X Prize Foundation

The medical diagnostic tool envisioned by the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize may well look much like a smartphone running an app with wireless sensing capability, as shown in this artist's concept.

Qualcomm and the X Prize Foundation have laid out a $10 million plan to spur the development of medical diagnosis devices like the ones seen on "Star Trek" science-fiction shows — not by the 23rd century, but by mid-2015.

The Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize is the latest multimillion-dollar competition designed to serve as an incentive for technological breakthroughs, following in the footsteps of X Prizes for private-sector spaceflight, ultra-efficient automobiles. low-cost genome sequencing and robotic moon missions.

"There is a generation of exponentially growing technologies ... that are coming together to empower us to make real the 'Star Trek' technology of a medical tricorder," Peter Diamandis, the X Prize Foundation's CEO, told me today.

Tricorders are the hand-held props that have been used by "Star Trek" characters dating back to the 1960s to check a crew member's vital signs — with the aim of keeping Bones from having to tell Captain Kirk, "He's dead, Jim." The old ones looked like cassette recorders with mini-TV screens, while the later models looked like flip phones gone wild.

The tricorder envisioned for the X Prize would be a hand-held wireless device like a smartphone, weighing no more than 5 pounds. It'll have to record health indicators such as blood pressure, respiratory rate, pulse and temperature, and diagnose a set of 15 diseases to be named later. Diamandis said the diseases on the list would probably include respiratory and cardiovascular conditions.

Details still to be determined
The X Prize specifications still have to be filled out, along with the scale to be used for judging the various models in the competition, but the foundation says "teams will have to consider tradeoffs amongst weight, functionality, power requirements, battery life, screen resolution, A.I. engine location, diagnosis capability, end consumer cost, and so on."

The schedule calls for the initial draft of the competition guidelines to be made public later this month, and massaged into their final form by September or so. The teams that seek the prize will show off their prototypes during a qualifying round in mid-2014, and the top 10 teams will compete in a final round in mid-2015. That final round will require teams to use their devices to diagnose 15 to 30 consumers over the course of three days. The teams will be judged based on the diagnoses as well an assessment of consumer experience and proof of adequate high-frequency data logging.

The top team will win $7 million, and there'll also be a $2 million second prize and a $1 million third prize, all put up by the Qualcomm Foundation.

"Health care today certainly falls far short of the vision portrayed in 'Star Trek,'" Paul Jacobs, who is Qualcomm's chairman and CEO as well as chair of the Qualcomm Foundation, said today in a news release. "By sponsoring the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize competition, the Qualcomm Foundation will stimulate the imaginations of entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists and doctors to create wireless health services and technologies that improve lives, increase consumer access to health care and drive efficiencies in the health care system. This competition will accelerate the development of tools that can empower consumers to take charge of their own bodies and manage their own care."

The competition's formal kickoff came today during Jacobs' keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It follows up on last May's announcement that Qualcomm, a global company focusing on wireless network technology, would sponsor the competition.

Tricorders galore
Whether or not you call it a tricorder, the hand-held medical diagnostic device definitely seems to be an idea whose time has come. Just last month, the Canadian government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced a $38.5 million initiative to further the development of such devices, as well as the medical tests and protocols that would run on them. Also last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave its approval to the first hand-held device to detect brain bleeding.

Meanwhile, a startup called Scanadu is working on a "tricorder" that parents can use to monitor their kids' health, and there are so many medical monitoring apps for smartphones that the FDA is working on regulatory guidelines for them.

Like other X Prizes, the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize is intended to provide an extra incentive for innovators rather than a profitable venture in itself. The Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight serves as an example: Software billionaire Paul Allen spent upwards of $25 million to win the $10 milllion prize in 2004. But that venture opened the way for what could be more profitable space ventures to come, including Virgin Galactic and Stratolaunch.

Diamandis said the Tricorder X Prize competition was open to ventures that were already involved in the medical-device market, although he emphasized that the eligibility rules had not yet been put in their final form. He also emphasized that the winning device won't be the final word in the future history of the "Star Trek" tricorder.

"The target here is Tricorder 1.0," he told me. "It's about demonstrating the diversity of different diseases or conditions that can be diagnosed with a mobile, user-friendly, hand-held device."

Does it sound as if we're at a turning point for medical technology, or will this turn out to be just one more chapter in a science-fiction novel about more affordable health care? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

More about tricorder dreams:

• From 2000: Medicine meets the final frontier
• From 2008: Trekkie tricorder detects ailments
• From 2011: iPhones turn into medical imagers
• Gallery: Reality check for 'Star Trek' tech

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Nothing focuses your attention on the future like a forecast, especially when it comes to the technologies that will be changing daily life in the years to come. Five years, to be exact. That's why forecasts like IBM's annual "Five in Five" are so thought-provoking, even if they're occasionally wrong.

Actually, IBM's record is pretty good: This month marks the five-year anniversary of IBM's first list of five technologies that were expected to make the most impact in five years' time. The company nailed 2006's predictions on the rise of telemedicine, location-aware mobile devices, real-time speech translation and nanotechnology. But the fifth prediction, which focused on the rise of virtual 3-D environments, hasn't worked out the way IBM expected. Sure, Second Life is still around — in fact, I'll be hosting my next "Virtually Speaking Science" show in Second Life on Jan. 4. But such virtual worlds haven't become the principal vehicle for real-world commerce ... yet.

"It's not perfect," admitted Bernie Meyerson, IBM's vice president of innovation. Sometimes the company's researchers latch onto a idea whose time has not yet come, and perhaps never will. But for the most part, "this stuff has actually panned out a lot," Meyerson said.

Is technological progress always a good thing? Not necessarily, if you're talking about key-logging software on mobile devices, or government-supported spyware. The latest predictions from IBM, issued today, have lots of potential for a dreams-vs.-nightmares debate:

1. People power will come to life: Devices will be built to capture the power generated as you jog, or ride your bike, or run water through the pipes of your home. Even the heat that builds up in your computer's circuitry could be harvested rather than going to waste. Engineers have already developed electricity-generating backpacks and shoes that could build up enough juice to power the electronic devices you carry around with you. On the other end of the scale, IBM researchers in Ireland are already working on ocean wave-power projects.

The down side? It's tricky to design devices that produce enough power to make them cost-effective — and at the same time comfortable to wear. A lot of people already feel tied down by technology. Will they be willing to pile on the extra bulk of power-generating contraptions? Will the future economics of energy justify micro-power harvesting?

2. You will never need a password again: Instead of trying to keep track of all those different passwords for your online accounts, and still worrying that someone will break in and steal your identity, we'll find ourselves actually using technologies such as iris recognition, face recognition and voice recognition to log in. "The world of biometrics is coming," Meyerson said.

The down side? It sounds a little creepy, like the world of the movie "The Minority Report," and it could be seen as another intrusion on personal privacy. Meyerson, however, argues that "you can deal with the creep-out factor" by making sure users have the freedom to opt in or opt out of biometric identity systems. The keys to your identity could be kept on your device rather than in a central repository. And using multiple methods — for example, iris plus voice — would make it astronomically unlikely that someone could crack your code. "Personally, I think the risk is far greater not doing this," Meyerson said.

3. Mind reading is no longer science fiction: This prediction isn't about psychic powers. For years, researchers have worked on ways to control robotic arms or blips on a computer by reading brain signals — and IBM thinks that technology will be ready for prime time (or drive time) within the next five years. That would be particularly good news for quadriplegics and "locked-in" patients looking for better ways to interact with the outside world. It might lead to better approaches to medical concerns ranging from autism to stroke rehabilitation. And think of the cool video games you could be playing when you just have to think something to make it so. Meyerson said companies such as Emotiv Lifesciences are already preparing the way for this brave new world.

The down side? Once you give someone direct access to your brain, wouldn't it be at least theoretically possible to eavesdrop on your innermost thoughts? "People worry about something that will interpret your brain," Meyerson said. "That's not what we're talking about here." But as long as we're talking about science fiction becoming reality, we'd better keep the dark side of the sci-fi story in mind as well.

4. The digital divide will cease to exist: IBM suggests that the cost of smartphones and online services will become so low that everyone will be plugged into the global network. "It's gotten to the point where it's cheaper to have a cell phone than to have a bank account," Meyerson said. The gap between haves and have-nots will fade away in the digital world. IBM researchers are already working to make this vision a reality. In India, they're helping to create technologies that allow even illiterate and semi-literate people to use mobile devices for basic services.

The down side? Who'll be in charge of this digital paradise for the haves? Privacy advocates might see this as a fresh cause for concern. As governments rely increasingly on digital networks to distribute services, will life become that much more difficult for those who are unable or unwilling to plug in?

5. Junk mail will become priority mail: This is the flip side of junk-mail filters. Computerized systems for filtering information will become so adept at reading your preferences that they'll become true digital assistants, presenting you with the data that you need (or want) to know while blocking the junk. In the next five years, you'll have the technology that turned the Watson supercomputer into a "Jeopardy" quiz-show champion at your fingertips. Watson might even take the initiative — for example, by putting tickets to a concert by your favorite band on hold the moment they go on sale, even before you've heard about it.

The down side? What if your personal digital assistant turns out to be a paranoid HAL 9000 instead of a helpful Watson? What if Watson goes rogue with your credit-card number? And what about the privacy concerns? Ten years from now, will the authorities be able to learn all about you by tapping into your junk-mail filter?

Are IBM's latest "Five in Five" predictions hits or misses? Visions of paradise, or another circle of hell? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below, and check out these past predictions:

• 2006: IBM issues five-tech forecast
• 2007: Five frontier technologies
• 2007: IBM follows up with a fresh 'Five in Five'
• 2008: A crystal ball for health, energy and more
• 2009: How future technologies will change cities
• 2010: Hits and misses in the five-tech forecast

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.