ROBOTIC limbs controlled solely by the mind could be available to paralysed people within a year.
Monkeys are being trained to control what might be the world's most sophisticated and human-like robot arm. But they never touch the prosthetic limb or fiddle with a remote control: they guide it with their thoughts alone. If trials are successful, in a few months from now people with spinal cord injuries could learn to do the same.
In 2008, Andrew Schwartz of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania published a landmark paper describing how two rhesus macaques learned to feed themselves marshmallows and fruit using a crude robotic limb controlled by electrodes implanted in their brains (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature06996). No brain-controlled prosthetic limb had ever carried out a more complex real-world task. Still, Schwartz envisioned a more elegant and nimble device that paralysed people could use - something much closer to a human hand.
Enter the Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL), a bionic limb that closely approximates the form and agility of a human arm and hand. Born from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Revolutionizing Prosthetics programme, and designed by Michael McLoughlin's team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, the MPL is made from a combination of lightweight carbon fibre and high-strength alloys. It has 22 degrees of freedom, compared with the human arm's 30, and can grasp precisely and firmly without crushing fragile objects. The wrist and elbow rotate with ease and, like an average human limb, it weighs just under 4.5 kilograms.
"I would say it's very close to human dexterity," says McLoughlin. "It can't do absolutely everything - it can't cup the palm, for example - but it can control all fingers individually. I don't think there is another limb that approaches it." ..
via Mind-controlled prosthetics to help amputees - health - 28 April 2011 - New Scientist.
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Mind-controlled prosthetics to help amputees
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Science Fiction Timeline of Inventions (Listed by Publication Date)
Most of these items are linked to information about similar real-life inventions and inventors; click on an invention to learn more about it.
...
via Science Fiction Timeline of Inventions (Listed by Publication Date).
Many more at the link.
Factory Uses Robots To Grow Human Skin
Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology in Germany oversee a skin-making process controlled by robots. They currently produce 5,000 penny-sized disks of tissue every month, at around $72 per unit. It is hoped that in the future there will be many similar factories, mass-producing skin at a low cost for use in clinical testing and transplants in humans.
With robots and computers controlling the process, this maintains a sterile and climate-controlled environment for the skin to be developed, reducing the risk of contamination. Successfully engineered tissue for humans has been achieved but it is very costly and labor-intensive. Using robots as automated manufacturers would reduce both the cost and the manpower needed, enabling the efficient production of tissue, cartilage and even entire organs.
via Factory Uses Robots To Grow Human Skin - PSFK.
Amazon seller lists book at $23,698,655.93 -- plus shipping
Lots of normal people would pay $23 for a book. But $23.7 million plus $3.99 shipping for a scientific book about flies!? This unthinkable sticker price for "The Making of a Fly" on Amazon.com was spotted on April 18 by Michael Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and blogger. The market-blind book listing was not the result of uncontrollable demand for Peter Lawrence's "classic work in developmental biology," Eisen writes. Instead, it appears it was sparked by a robot price war. "What's fascinating about all this is both the seemingly endless possibilities for both chaos and mischief," writes Eisen, who works at the University of California at Berkeley and blogs at a site called "it is NOT junk." "It seems impossible that we stumbled onto the only example of this kind of upward pricing spiral. "Eisen watched the robot price war from April 8 to 18 and calculated that two booksellers were automatically adjusting their prices against each other. One equation kept setting the price of the first book at 1.27059 times the price of the second book, according to Eisen's analysis, which is posted in detail on his blog. The other equation automatically set its price at 0.9983 times the price of the other book. So the prices of the two books escalated in tandem into the millions, with the second book always selling for slightly less than the first. Not that that matters much when you're selling a book about flies for millions of dollars. The incident highlights a little-known fact about e-commerce sites such as Amazon: Often, people don't create and update prices; computer algorithms do. Individual booksellers on Amazon and other sites pay third-party companies for algorithm services that automatically update prices. Some of these computer programs purportedly work very well, getting sellers up to 60% more sales because they underbid the competition automatically and repeatedly.
via Amazon seller lists book at $23,698,655.93 -- plus shipping - CNN.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Development in fog harvesting process may make water available to the world’s poor
In the arid Namib Desert on the west coast of Africa, one type of beetle has found a distinctive way of surviving. When the morning fog rolls in, the Stenocara gracilipes species, also known as the Namib Beetle, collects water droplets on its bumpy back, then lets the moisture roll down into its mouth, allowing it to drink in an area devoid of flowing water.
What nature has developed, Shreerang Chhatre wants to refine, to help the world's poor. Chhatre is an engineer and aspiring entrepreneur at MIT who works on fog harvesting, the deployment of devices that, like the beetle, attract water droplets and corral the runoff. This way, poor villagers could collect clean water near their homes, instead of spending hours carrying water from distant wells or streams. In pursuing the technical and financial sides of his project, Chhatre is simultaneously a doctoral candidate in chemical engineering at MIT; an MBA student at the MIT Sloan School of Management; and a fellow at MIT's Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship.
Access to water is a pressing global issue: the World Health Organization and UNICEF estimate that nearly 900 million people worldwide live without safe drinking water. The burden of finding and transporting that water falls heavily on women and children. "As a middle-class person, I think it's terrible that the poor have to spend hours a day walking just to obtain a basic necessity," Chhatre says.
A fog-harvesting device consists of a fence-like mesh panel, which attracts droplets, connected to receptacles into which water drips. Chhatre has co-authored published papers on the materials used in these devices, and believes he has improved their efficacy. "The technical component of my research is done," Chhatre says. He is pursuing his work at MIT Sloan and the Legatum Center in order to develop a workable business plan for implementing fog-harvesting devices.
Interest in fog harvesting dates to the 1990s, and increased when new research on Stenocara gracilipes made a splash in 2001. A few technologists saw potential in the concept for people. One Canadian charitable organization, FogQuest, has tested projects in Chile and Guatemala.
Chhatre's training as a chemical engineer has focused on the wettability of materials, their tendency to either absorb or repel liquids (think of a duck's feathers, which repel water). ...
One basic principle of a good fog-harvesting device is that it must have a combination of surfaces that attract and repel water. For instance, the shell of Stenocara gracilipes has bumps that attract water and troughs that repel it; this way, drops collects on the bumps, then run off through the troughs without being absorbed, so that the water reaches the beetle's mouth.
To build fog-harvesting devices that work on a human scale, Chhatre says, "The idea is to use the design principles we developed and extend them to this problem."
To build larger fog harvesters, researchers generally use mesh, rather than a solid surface like a beetle's shell, because a completely impermeable object creates wind currents that will drag water droplets away from it. In this sense, the beetle's physiology is an inspiration for human fog harvesting, not a template. "We tried to replicate what the beetle has, but found this kind of open permeable surface is better," Chhatre says. "The beetle only needs to drink a few micro-liters of water. We want to capture as large a quantity as possible." ...
via Development in fog harvesting process may make water available to the world’s poor.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Apple's iPhones and Google's Androids Send Cellphone Location
Apple Inc.'s iPhones and Google Inc.'s Android smartphones regularly transmit their locations back to Apple and Google, respectively, according to data and documents analyzed by The Wall Street Journal—intensifying concerns over privacy and the widening trade in personal data.
Google and Apple are gathering location information as part of their race to build massive databases capable of pinpointing people's locations via their cellphones. These databases could help them tap the $2.9 billion market for location-based services—expected to rise to $8.3 billion in 2014, according to research firm Gartner Inc.
In the case of Google, according to new research by security analyst Samy Kamkar, an HTC Android phone collected its location every few seconds and transmitted the data to Google at least several times an hour. It also transmitted the name, location and signal strength of any nearby Wi-Fi networks, as well as a unique phone identifier.
Google declined to comment on the findings.
Until last year, Google was collecting similar Wi-Fi data with its fleet of StreetView cars that map and photograph streets world-wide. The company shut down its StreetView Wi-Fi collection last year after it inadvertently collected e-mail addresses, passwords and other personal information from Wi-Fi networks. The data that Mr. Kamkar observed being transmitted on Android phones didn't include such personal information.
Apple, meanwhile, says it "intermittently" collects location data, including GPS coordinates, of many iPhone users and nearby Wi-Fi networks and transmits that data to itself every 12 hours, according to a letter the company sent to U.S. Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) last year. Apple didn't respond to requests for comment.
The Google and Apple developments follow the Journal's findings last year that some of the most popular smartphone apps use location data and other personal information even more aggressively than this—in some cases sharing it with third-party companies without the user's consent or knowledge.
Apple this week separately has come under fire after researchers found that iPhones store unencrypted databases containing location information sometimes stretching back several months. ...
Unlike many cell-phone-enabled violations of your privacy, whose purpose is mainly to enrich the app maker, the storage of location data on iPhones and the gathering of location data by Android phones at least provide benefits to users and are under user control.
The database works behind the scenes mainly to improve wireless data service, traffic maps and other basic functions of a smartphone.
Location data isn't even gathered if location services are turned off.
Yes, the storage of unencrypted location data on your phone is a potential privacy breach waiting to happen. But there's a whole list of privacy violations taking place through your phone every day.
The hard reality is that there's only one way to guarantee privacy with a cell phone: Remove the battery.
via Apple's iPhones and Google's Androids Send Cellphone Location - WSJ.com.
US drone raid 'kills 25' in Pakistan
At least 25 people have been killed in a US drone strike in the troubled Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan, officials told the BBC.
Missiles were fired on a large compound in the town of Spinwam, but five women and four children in a nearby house were also killed.
The area is a haven for al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
Meanwhile, at least 13 soldiers died when hundreds of insurgents attacked a checkpoint near the Afghan border.
Pakistani security officials told the BBC that Afghan militants had crossed the border and stormed the army post in the Lower Dir area.
Security forces temporarily abandoned the post but now, residents say, they are back in control and have placed the entire area under curfew.
Pakistani-US tensions
Pakistani officials say four missiles were fired on a large compound occupied by supporters of local militant commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur, in Spinwam, 40km (25 miles) north-east of the tribal region's main town of Miranshah.
Several people were also wounded in Friday's attack, a local intelligence official was quoted as telling AFP news agency.
The US does not routinely confirm it conducts drone operations in Pakistan.
But analysts say only American forces have the capacity to deploy such aircraft. US drone attacks have escalated in the region since President Barack Obama took office. More than 100 raids were reported last year. ...
via BBC News - Pakistan: US drone raid 'kills 25' in N Waziristan.
Google fined $5m over Linux patent row
A judgement by a Texas jury against Google could have major implications for the search giant and the open source world said experts.
The internet titan was found guilty of infringing a patent related to the Linux kernel and fined $5m (£3.2m).
The software is used by Google for its server platforms and could also extend to its Android mobile platform.
The kernel is at the core of the open-source operating system meaning this verdict could be far-reaching.
The case resulted in a victory for a firm called Bedrock Computer Technologies which has also sued Yahoo, MySpace, Amazon, PayPal, Match.com and AOL.
"The amount of the fine is not what makes this an important issue," intellectual property activist Florian Mueller told BBC News.
"This is a modest amount considering Google is probably the largest scale Linux user in the world.
"The implication here is really that there is a huge number of Linux users who will be required to pay royalties if this patent holder knocks on their doors in the US. This is definitely a major impediment to the growth of Linux and makes companies, including Google, that rely on open source code particularly vulnerable to patent threats."
That is also the view of other industry watchers who expect a flood of lawsuits against companies who rely on open source code.
"Those looking to cash in on buried patents need only spend time poring over code and looking for infringements," said Christopher Dawson of technology blog ZDNet."It costs a lot less than $5m to hire a team of programmers in India to do code review. This, I'm afraid, is just the beginning and stands to do a fair amount of harm to industry momentum and to the private companies that provide vast incentive for the advancement of open source software."
But Google has said it will continue to defend against such attacks like this one on the open source community.
"The recent explosion in patent litigation is turning the world's information highway into a toll road, forcing companies to spend millions and millions of dollars defending old, questionable patent claims and wasting resources that would be much better spent investing in new technologies for users and creating jobs," said Google. ...
via BBC News - Google fined $5m over Linux patent row.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Coming Soon From the Air Force: Mind-Reading Drones
Scientifically speaking, it’s only a matter of time before the drones become self-aware and kill us all. Now the Air Force is hastening that day of reckoning.
Buried within a seemingly innocuous list of the Air Force’s recent contract awards to small businesses are details of plans for robot planes that not only think, but anticipate the moves of human pilots. And you thought it was just the Navy that was bringing us to the brink of the drone apocalypse.
It all starts with a solution for a legitimate problem. It’s dangerous to fly and land drones at busy terminals. Manned airplanes can collide with drones, which may not be able to make quick course adjustments based on information from air traffic control as swiftly as a human pilot can. And getting air traffic control involved in the drones cuts against the desire for truly autonomous aircraft. What to do?
The answer: design an algorithm that reads people’s minds. Or the next best thing — anticipates a pilot’s reaction to a drone flying too close.
Enter Soar Technologies, a Michigan company that proposes to create something it calls “Explanation, Schemas, and Prediction for Recognition of Intent in the Terminal Area of Operations,” or ESPRIT. It’ll create a “Schema Engine” that uses “memory management, pattern matching, and goal-based reasoning” to infer the intentions of nearby aircraft. Not presuming that every flight will go according to plan, the Schema Engine’s “cognitive explanation mechanism” will help the drone figure out if a pilot is flying erratically or out of control. The Air Force signed a contract with Soar, whose representatives were unreachable for comment, on December 23.
And Soar’s not the only one. California-based Stottler Henke Associates argues that one algorithm won’t get the job done. Its rival proposal, the Intelligent Pilot Intent Analysis System would “represent and execute expert pilot reasoning processes to infer other pilots’ intents in the same way human pilots currently do.” They don’t say how their system will work and they’ve yet to return an inquiry seeking explanation. A different company, Barron Associates, wants to use sensors as well as algorithms to avoid collision.
And Stottler Henke is explicitly thinking about how to weaponize their mind-reading program. “Many of the pilot intent analysis techniques described are also applicable for determining illegal intent and are therefore directly applicable to finding terrorists and smugglers,” it told the Air Force. Boom: deal inked on January 7. ...
via Coming Soon From the Air Force: Mind-Reading Drones « P3air.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Robot Sportswriter Outperforms Human
... when they came across a particularly bad account of a baseball game on the official George Washington University athletics website, GWSports.com, they assumed it was machine-generated.
The University of Virginia's Will Roberts had pitched a perfect game against George Washington. The story on GWSports.com neglected to mention that fact until the second to last paragraph.
"That was shocking," Carmichael says. "This was the first time this had happened in the NCAA since 2002. And when it happens, you expect to see it in the headline and you expect to see everyone talking about that aspect of the game."
The writer of that story — it turns out — was a living, breathing human being. But the creators of Narrative Science, a news-writing software program, took Deadspin's assumption as fighting words. They set out to prove that their system could produce a better story.
"We actually got hold of the information director of the school, we got the raw material, the numbers around the story," said Kris Hammond, chief technology officer of Narrative Science. "And we fed it to our system, which wrote the story, where the headline and the lead were focused on the fact that it was a no-hitter. Because how could you write a baseball story and not notice that it was a no hitter? I mean what kind of writer or machine would you be?"
And, here's the machine-generated copy Narrative Science sent in to Deadspin:
Tuesday was a great day for W. Roberts, as the junior pitcher threw a perfect game to carry Virginia to a 2-0 victory over George Washington at Davenport Field.
Twenty-seven Colonials came to the plate and the Virginia pitcher vanquished them all, pitching a perfect game. He struck out 10 batters while recording his momentous feat. Roberts got Ryan Thomas to ground out for the final out of the game.
Tom Gately came up short on the rubber for the Colonials, recording a loss. He went three innings, walked two, struck out one, and allowed two runs.
The Cavaliers went up for good in the fourth, scoring two runs on a fielder's choice and a balk.
Deadspin conceded. It published a follow-up saying that — in this case — the machine did write the better story.
"The image of the robots typing wins me over for sure," says Carmichael. "And on top of that, in some cases, as we've seen with Narrative Science's story, they actually can produce the stronger story."
via Big Swing: Robot Sportswriter Outperforms Human : NPR.
Discovering the hidden DVD player in your Prius
My GPS navigation system has a DVD player of its very own hidden in the car. I just found it today and popped out the disk.Here is what it looks like.
I can read it in my computer and the version file matches the DATA ver.07.1 printed on the label.
The newest version from the dealer (10.1 with 11.1 due out "Fall 2011") costs $200. I don't want to spend that much. Also, I've heard some people had their map shifted by 100ft or more so the previous locations did not work and so the system gave wrong directions after the upgrade. (Just a rumor.)
With the 2009 Prius you are looking for a GEN 5 DVD. The GEN is your hardware generation and it doesn't ever change for your car.
Some people are hacking these DVDs to unlock the GPS system so you can use it while in motion, and so you can play ordinary movie DVDs that show up on your NAV screen.
Both seem like bad ideas, but I like hacking things just to see if it can be done. For example, can I turn on the reverse video camera feed while moving forward? I totally want to do that.
I wouldn't watch movies while driving, but there are times when I start rolling and I have one more number to enter for an address in the GPS and the system shuts off. I hate that. I would like to be able to override it.
Google for instructions, but heed this: if your Prius accelerates without warning and kills you after you hack it with a file downloaded from some Russian or Chinese web site, you'll have only yourself to blame.
Voyager 1 mission: A new frontier in quest to understand the cosmos
In a small room at Caltech, space physicist Ed Stone and four of his colleagues puzzle over a trove of data that has just arrived from the bulbous edge of the solar system.
"What, exactly, are we looking at?" Stone asks.
The data form a map of invisible matter, a slush of atomic particles once part of stars that exploded around 10 million years ago. The information has come from Voyager 1, the spindly little spacecraft that rocketed from Florida more than 30 years before and is still traveling, farther from Earth than any human-made object ever has.
Stone and his associates are stumped. "What are we going to find?" Stone wonders. "Right now, I don't think anybody knows."
The godfather of the interstellar mission called Voyager is now 75. He is rail thin, and his shoulders have a faint slope. A crown of gray hair circles the top of his otherwise bald head. He is wearing his standard work attire: gray sport jacket, gray pants, gray shoes, gray socks — and a white shirt.
Despite his uncertainty, his voice is calm. "Eventually," he assures the others, "we're going to figure this out."
Stone is agnostic about God, but has a belief that knowing about the cosmos brings deeper understanding of Earth. Although he and the other scientists might not comprehend Voyager's observations right now, experience tells him their meanings will be divined.
He also believes they will learn much more. Voyager 1 is close to bursting out of the solar system. Once it makes it beyond the influence of the sun, the spacecraft will enter part of the universe that scientists have only been able speculate about: Deep space.
"We're very, very close," Stone says, after the meeting with his collaborators. "We can't say for sure how long it is going to take to get there. My best guess is four years, maybe five."
That would make him 79 or 80. Projections have fallen short at times during this mission. Deep space still might be a decade away.
"Will I be around when Voyager finally makes it?" Stone draws a breath. For a moment, he is silent. ...
What he lacks in zippy personality, his colleagues say, he makes up for by usually being the smartest — and most humble — person in the room. Few, if anyone, can recall him losing his cool or even being mildly dejected. "He is a leader regarded as above the fray," says science writer Timothy Ferris, who helped Sagan create the Voyager discs.
"Stone is pretty much universally admired, and that is very unusual for someone in his position."
In 2001, at age 65, Stone retired from JPL and returned to Caltech to teach physics. By then, much of the machinery on the Voyagers had been shuttered to save power for the final push. Their next important discoveries would come only as they began escaping the solar system.
Science has created models of deep space, but no one can say for sure what it is like — its temperatures, its composition or the speed of its interstellar wind. Most important, no one knows exactly how deep space relates to the formation of Earth.
Stone, still the lead scientist, oversees a slimmed-down Voyager team — about 20 researchers who must find time for the mission among their other projects. Some are at Caltech and JPL, others at universities and laboratories scattered across the country.
They follow the probes, especially Voyager 1, with mounting interest. Running on dwindling plutonium, using antiquated computers and recording data on eight-track tapes that get sent to Earth on faint radio waves, Voyager 2 races through space about 9 billion miles away and Voyager 1, 11 billion.
If it reaches deep space, scientists will ask Voyager 1 to perform one more great task before it runs out of power, to use a collection of measuring devices, including one known as a cosmic-ray spectrometer, which Stone helped design, to gather information and send it back to Earth. Humans then will have their first definitive look at the great beyond. ....
via Voyager 1 mission: A new frontier in quest to understand the cosmos - latimes.com.
Web creator's net neutrality fear
The inventor of the web has said that governments must act to preserve the principle of net neutrality.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee told the BBC that legislation may be needed if self-regulation failed.
He been asked by the UK government to negotiate an agreement on an open internet between service providers and content firms like the BBC and Skype.
Sir Tim would prefer self-regulation by the internet industry, but progress has been slow.
"If it fails the government has to be absolutely ready to legislate," he said.
"It may be that the openness of the internet, we should just put into law."
Net neutrality, the idea that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally, has been a controversial issue in the United States and is now moving up the political agenda in the UK.
Two tier
Internet Service Providers have claimed that they need to be able to control the growing traffic online, and content creators fear that the result could be a two-speed internet.
Sir Tim said that he understands the need for traffic management but any move to discriminate between different content businesses would be a step too far.
"What you lose when you do that is you lose the open market," he said.
"What the companies gain is that they get complete control of you."
But Professor William Dutton of the Oxford Internet Institute warned that enshrining net neutrality in law had its dangers.
"Once you allow the state in, you open the door to all sorts of regulation of the internet controls on content creation," he said.
Sir Tim, who was speaking at the opening of the World Wide Web Consortium's UK offices in Oxford, said that internet access was now becoming a human right.
At the same time it was also a very powerful tool for either a government or a large company to get to control of.
He warned that this could lead to users being blocked from visiting sites that were not politically correct, or religiously correct, or commercially correct. ...
via BBC News - Web creator's net neutrality fear.
Is Sitting a Lethal Activity?
DR. LEVINE’S MAGIC UNDERWEAR resembled bicycle shorts, black and skintight, but with sensors mounted on the thighs and wires running to a fanny pack. The look was part Euro tourist, part cyborg. Twice a second, 24 hours a day, the magic underwear’s accelerometers and inclinometers would assess every movement I made, however small, and whether I was lying, walking, standing or sitting. James Levine, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., has an intense interest in how much people move — and how much they don’t. He is a leader of an emerging field that some call inactivity studies, which has challenged long-held beliefs about human health and obesity. ...
His initial question — which he first posed in a 1999 study — was simple: Why do some people who consume the same amount of food as others gain more weight? After assessing how much food each of his subjects needed to maintain their current weight, Dr. Levine then began to ply them with an extra 1,000 calories per day. Sure enough, some of his subjects packed on the pounds, while others gained little to no weight.
“We measured everything, thinking we were going to find some magic metabolic factor that would explain why some people didn’t gain weight,” explains Dr. Michael Jensen, a Mayo Clinic researcher who collaborated with Dr. Levine on the studies. But that wasn’t the case. Then six years later, with the help of the motion-tracking underwear, they discovered the answer. “The people who didn’t gain weight were unconsciously moving around more,” Dr. Jensen says. They hadn’t started exercising more — that was prohibited by the study. Their bodies simply responded naturally by making more little movements than they had before the overfeeding began, like taking the stairs, trotting down the hall to the office water cooler, bustling about with chores at home or simply fidgeting. On average, the subjects who gained weight sat two hours more per day than those who hadn’t. ...
for most of us, when we’re awake and not moving, we’re sitting. This is your body on chairs: Electrical activity in the muscles drops — “the muscles go as silent as those of a dead horse,” Hamilton says — leading to a cascade of harmful metabolic effects. Your calorie-burning rate immediately plunges to about one per minute, a third of what it would be if you got up and walked. Insulin effectiveness drops within a single day, and the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes rises. So does the risk of being obese. The enzymes responsible for breaking down lipids and triglycerides — for “vacuuming up fat out of the bloodstream,” as Hamilton puts it — plunge, which in turn causes the levels of good (HDL) cholesterol to fall.
Hamilton’s most recent work has examined how rapidly inactivity can cause harm. In studies of rats who were forced to be inactive, for example, he discovered that the leg muscles responsible for standing almost immediately lost more than 75 percent of their ability to remove harmful lipo-proteins from the blood. To show that the ill effects of sitting could have a rapid onset in humans too, Hamilton recruited 14 young, fit and thin volunteers and recorded a 40 percent reduction in insulin’s ability to uptake glucose in the subjects — after 24 hours of being sedentary.
Over a lifetime, the unhealthful effects of sitting add up. Alpa Patel, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society, tracked the health of 123,000 Americans between 1992 and 2006. The men in the study who spent six hours or more per day of their leisure time sitting had an overall death rate that was about 20 percent higher than the men who sat for three hours or less. The death rate for women who sat for more than six hours a day was about 40 percent higher. Patel estimates that on average, people who sit too much shave a few years off of their lives. ...
via Is Sitting a Lethal Activity? - NYTimes.com.
I exercise 20 to 30 minutes a day, but I still sit for about 10 hours average a day. Today I worked 14 stressful seated hours. Not sure how to change that... we need computers that allow us to roam around... and I need some workaholics anonymous sessions.
Google Wi-Fi Judge Asks if Packet Sniffing Is Spying
The question of whether Google is liable for damages for secretly intercepting data on open Wi-Fi routers across the United States is boiling down to the definition of a “radio communication.”
That appears to be the legal theory embraced by the Silicon Valley federal judge presiding over nearly a dozen combined lawsuits seeking damages from Google for eavesdropping on open Wi-Fi networks from its Street View mapping cars. The cars had been equipped with Wi-Fi–sniffing hardware to record the names and MAC addresses of routers to improve Google location-specific services.
But those cars were also capturing the contents of internet packets that were sent over unencrypted Wi-Fi as they drove by, something the company said was an accidental leftover from testing.
While the company quickly admitted that it had made a mistake and temporarily grounded its fleet of mapping vehicles last year, the company was confronted with a number of investigations around the world, as well as class-action lawsuits that were joined in San Jose, California. The lawsuits are being heard by U.S. District Judge James Ware.
At the center of the legal flap is whether Google breached the Wiretap Act. The answer is important not only to Google, but to the millions who use open, unencrypted Wi-Fi networks at coffee shops, restaurants or any other business trying to attract customers.
Google said it is not illegal to intercept data from unencrypted, or non-password-protected Wi-Fi networks. Plaintiffs’ lawyers representing millions of Americans whose internet traffic was sniffed by Google think otherwise, and are seeking unspecified damages.
Judge Ware, however, suggested the answer to the far-reaching privacy dilemma lies in an unanswered question. He has asked each side to define “radio communication” (.pdf) as it applies to the Wiretap Act, and wants to know whether home Wi-Fi networks are “radio communications” under the Wiretap Act.
In response, Google wrote last week that open Wi-Fi networks are akin to “radio communications” like AM/FM radio, citizens’ band and police and fire bands — and are “readily accessible” to the general public. Indeed, packet-sniffing software, such as Wireshark and Firesheep, is easily available online.
Hence, because unencrypted Wi-Fi signals travel over the radio spectrum, they are not covered by the Wiretap Act, (.pdf) Google responded.
“There can be no doubt that the transfer of any sign, signal, writing, images, sound, data, or intelligence of any nature transmitted over the radio spectrum constitutes a ‘radio communication.’ Indeed, there is nothing in the text or legislative history of the Wiretap Act that would exclude any transmission sent over the radio spectrum from the definition of ‘radio communication,’” Google wrote.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers countered that the communications in question started on a computer and only briefly were relayed on radio waves “across the living room from the recipient’s router to her laptop.”
“The fact that either the first or final few feet of the electronic communication may have gone via wireless transmission ['Wi-Fi'] does not transform the communication into a ‘radio communication’ broadcast similar to an AM/FM radio or a CB.,” (.pdf) plaintiffs’ lawyer Elizabeth Cabraser wrote. “Nor is there anything in the statute to define ‘radio communications’ as synonymous with anything sent on a radio wave, however briefly and without regard to the entirety of the communication system at use.”
Both sides agree, however, that it’s illegal to listen in on cordless phones. ...
via Google Wi-Fi Judge Asks if Packet Sniffing Is Spying | Threat Level | Wired.com.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Transcranial direct-current stimulation improves learning in military simulation
Last year a succession of volunteers sat down in a research lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico to play DARWARS Ambush!, a video game designed to train US soldiers bound for Iraq. Each person surveyed virtual landscapes strewn with dilapidated buildings and abandoned cars for signs of trouble — a shadow cast by a rooftop sniper, or an improvised explosive device behind a rubbish bin. With just seconds to react before a blast or shots rang out, most forgot about the wet sponge affixed to their right temple that was delivering a faint electric tickle. The volunteers received a few milliamps of current at most, and the simple gadget used to deliver it was powered by a 9-volt battery.
It might sound like some wacky garage experiment, but Vincent Clark, a neuroscientist at the University of New Mexico, says that the technique, called transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS), could improve learning. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funded the research in the hope that it could be used to sharpen soldiers' minds on the battlefield. Yet for all its simplicity, it seems to work.
Volunteers receiving 2 milliamps to the scalp (about one-five-hundredth the amount drawn by a 100-watt light bulb) showed twice as much improvement in the game after a short amount of training as those receiving one-twentieth the amount of current1. "They learn more quickly but they don't have a good intuitive or introspective sense about why," says Clark.
The technique, which has roots in research done more than two centuries ago, is experiencing something of a revival. Clark and others see tDCS as a way to tease apart the mechanisms of learning and cognition. As the technique is refined, researchers could, with the flick of a switch, amplify or mute activity in many areas of the brain and watch what happens behaviourally. The field is "going to explode very soon and give us all sorts of new information and new questions", says Clark. And as with some other interventions for stimulating brain activity, such as high-powered magnets or surgically implanted electrodes, researchers are attempting to use tDCS to treat neurological conditions, including depression and stroke. But given the simplicity of building tDCS devices, one of the most important questions will be whether it is ethical to tinker with healthy minds — to improve learning and cognition, for example. ... The jury is still out on whether these results will translate into real-world benefits. Nitsche says that it will be harder to improve cognition in young, healthy people — whose minds are theoretically already optimized — than in elderly people or those with addictions, for instance. "I wouldn't say it wouldn't be possible," says Nitsche. "But things might be a little more complicated."That's not stopping some people from trying it at home. Discussions are already appearing on the Internet: buy a 9-volt battery, some wire and a resistor, and you're theoretically there. One person, hoping to improve his concentration, was alarmed by the flashing lights he experienced — a commonly reported side effect, along with burning or itching at the site of the electrode. "I probably won't be doing this again," he said in a message posted online. Another wrote in an online patients' forum that the tDCS treatments he was giving to his wife were alleviating her chronic pain. Safety is an important issue. "With wires and batteries and home hobbyists trying to run electricity through their heads, somebody could get hurt," says Farah. ...
via Neuroscience: Brain buzz : Nature News.
EmSense comes up with EmBand device to track your brainwaves as you watch TV
Would you feel comfortable if market researchers could know your every thought?
A headband designed by San Francisco firm EmSense can sense your brainwaves as you have reactions to watching something and then record the data for researchers.
The process of measuring your reaction to something is known as ‘quantitative neurometrics’ and it can be carried out as you watch a computer or television screen.
The firm is launching its ‘in-home’ research panel employing the EmBand monitoring technology in an attempt to get better feedback on emotional responses.
The EmBand can also measure how much attention you are paying, or your ‘cognitive engagement’, by measuring brainwave activity, reported technology site Venture Beat.
The firm does studies by asking respondents to voluntarily share their information.
This has been compared to the controversial 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, where authorities try to psychologically modify the behaviour of a teenage thug.
But the big difference with EmSense is that the test subjects are volunteers. ...
via EmSense comes up with EmBand device to track your brainwaves as you watch TV | Mail Online.
Friday, April 15, 2011
How magnets affect the human brain
Put a powerful magnet against the side of your head and it can interfere with the neurons working underneath. The technique is being used to treat severe depression, but it can also produce some nifty party tricks. In this video, a magnet held to left side of New Scientist editor Roger Highfield's skull interrupts his ability to speak a nursery rhyme. But when Highfield sings the same rhyme, there's no effect. That's because the neurons that control speech and the neurons that control singing are in separate parts of the brain. The magnet disabled Highfield's speech centers, but left his ability to sing untouched.
via How magnets affect the human brain - Boing Boing.
Feeling down? Grab an electromagnet and hold it close to your skull. Thanks to a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), you can enhance or suppress the activity of neurons just beneath it.
You can see the process at work in this video posted by New Scientist .
The magnetic fields interfered with the camera and made the video look somewhat psychedelic.
In the video, New Scientist editor Roger Highfield tries to recite "Humpty Dumpty" but is interrupted by magnetic interference. He was able to sing parts of the nursery rhyme though, as singing is control by a different part of the brain that the speech center.
Vincent Walsh from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London used magnets to shut off Highfield's speech center.
Highfield also demonstrated TMS in 2008 while science editor at The UK Telegraph .
New Scientist reported that because TMS does not require surgery, it is considered one of the safer forms of brain stimulation. However, some people experience pain in the scalp, headaches or facial spasms.
Fortunately, those side effects can be relieved by limiting TMS intensity and frequency and giving patients regular breaks in treatment.
Another plus for TMS is that researchers can disable parts of the brain at will, and the procedures can be reversed entirely.
In the United States, TMS is a legal way to treat severe depression. Unfortunately, treatment is done at a hospital, for about 35 minutes a day, five days a week, for four to six weeks.
Researchers at Emory University in Atlanta last year made a promising discovery regarding TMS. They found that a month's worth of treatment could be done in a few days with no apparent ill effects. Those results could lead to wider use of the procedure, according to New Scientist.
via my9tv
Once they learn a bit more focus I wonder what else they can stimulate in there? Could you turn someone into a puppet?
First commercial jetpack is 'months away'
It has been the stuff of science-fiction legend for generations, but the era of futuristic personal space-age travel may have finally dawned.
After completing a gruelling seven-minute outside test flight, the longest ever by a jetpack, the world’s first commercial rocketman suit could be just months from hitting the shelves.
Reaching death-defying altitudes of more than 100ft, the Martin Jetpack's flight last week brought 40 years of development near to a conclusion and the dreams of millions achingly close to reality.
Although limited to speeds well below its 60mph capacity, the remotely controlled test, using a weighted dummy pilot called Jetson, smashed records for altitude and air-time.
At its unveiling at a U.S. airshow in 2008, the aircraft did not go higher than 6ft - an arm's reach from a watchful ground crew - or fly for longer than 45 seconds.
Given the success of the trial, the first ‘jet-ski in the sky’ could now be dispatched for solo flights by the end of the year at a price of around £50,000 ($75,000) per machine.
Designed to be the ‘simplest aircraft in the world’ the Martin Jetpack will be a breeze to fly, according to inventor Glenn Martin.
He said: ‘You just strap it on and rev the nuts out of it and it lifts you up off the ground.
‘It’s just basic physics. As Newton said, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So when you shoot lots of air down very fast you go up and you're flying.'
Mr Martin says 2,500 people have already signed up for to buy the jetpack, with inquiries coming from Middle Eastern royalty and U.S. millionaires.
The two-litre 200-horsepower gasoline engine powers two ducted fans that can soar across the skies at 60mph at heights of up to 160ft.
The jetpack, which produces up to 6000rpm (revolutions per minute), carries enough fuel to fly for 30 minutes.
Its makers are targeting tourism joy flights, pilot training and private recreational sales.
‘Some just want to dodge the rush-hour traffic and do it in style’, Mr Martin said.
But the invention’s immediate deployment is likely to be as a ground-breaking defence tool with the U.S. military, which first tested jetpacks in the 1960s, and U.S. border control the first organisations to take delivery of the device.
Mr Martin, a 50-year-old father of two, sees the military version of the jetpack being used in hard-to-access areas, war zones to patrol borders and, if unmanned, to make difficult deliveries by remote control.
It could also be used in counter terrorism operations, as an airborne missile platform and mobile surveillance unit. ...
via First commercial jetpack is 'months away' after record-breaking 7-minute test flight | Mail Online.
UFO sightings predicted to soar, especially when they figure out how to run it in whisper mode.
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