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November 20 2009
TEDTalks : Tom Wujec demos the 13th-century astrolabe - Tom Wujec (2009)
Tom Wujec demos the 13th-century astrolabe
Medibots: The world's smallest surgeons
Advances in robotics could revolutionize healthcare, pushing the limits of what surgeons can achieve, from worm-inspired capsules to crawl through your gut, and systems swallowed in pieces that assemble themselves inside the body, to surgical robots that will soon be ready to embark on a fantastic voyage through our bodies, homing in on the part that's ailing and fixing it from the inside.
Swimming camera capsule (The Royal College of Surgeons / Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna)
(Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427351.100-medibots-the-worlds-smallest-surgeons.html)
Swimming camera capsule (The Royal College of Surgeons / Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna)
(Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427351.100-medibots-the-worlds-smallest-surgeons.html)
IBM scientists create rapid disease diagnostic chip
IBM scientists have created a fast, one-step point-of-care-diagnostic test, based on a silicon chip that uses capillary forces to analyze tiny samples of blood serum for the presence of disease markers.
It requires less sample volume, is significantly faster, portable, easy to use, and can test for many diseases, including cardiovascular disease -- a small sample of a patient's serum could be tested immediately following a heart attack to enable the doctor to quickly take a course of action to help the patient survive.
(Source: http://www.physorg.com/news177880059.html)
The Emerging Field of Biophotonic Communication
Sergei Mayburov at the Lebedev Institute of Physics in Moscow suggests that optical communication is a natural process in many cells of body, closely related to photosynthesis. (Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24425/?a=f)
On Your Last Nerve: Researchers Advance Understanding of Stem Cells
North Carolina State University researchers have identified a gene, FoxJ1, that tells embryonic stem cells in the brain when to stop producing neurons.
The research could lead to new treatments to replace damaged or diseased brain tissue. (Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091117102034.htm)
A Central Nervous System for Earth: HP's Ambitious Sensor Network
HP Labs has announced a project that aims to be a "Central Nervous System for the Earth" (CeNSE): a R&D program to build a planetwide sensing network, using billions of tiny accelerometers that detect motion and vibrations, and later, ones for light, temperature, barometric pressure, airflow and humidity.
The nodes could be stuck to bridges and buildings to warn of structural strains or weather conditions and along roadsides to monitor traffic, weather and road conditions. Other uses include in everyday electronics, tracking hospital equipment, sniffing out pesticides and pathogens in food, and ultimately even "recognize" the person using them and adapt.
HP Labs' ultimate aim is to have a worldwide network of a trillion of these CeNSE sensors. (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/11/18/18readwriteweb-a-central-nervous-system-for-earth-hps-ambi-15544.html)
Google to Add Captions, Improving YouTube Videos
In the first major step toward making millions of videos on YouTube accessible to deaf and hearing-impaired people, Google unveiled new technologies on Thursday that will automatically bring text captions to many videos on the site.
The technology will also open YouTube videos to a wider foreign market and make them more searchable, giving users the choice of using its automatic translation system to read the captions in 51 languages.
(Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10401170-2.html)
Sounds During Sleep Aid Memory, Study Finds
Playing sound cues associated with a picture in a specific location while people slept helped them remember more of what they had learned before they fell sleep, to the point where memories of individual facts were enhanced, scientists at Northwestern University report in the journal Science.
(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/science/20sleep.html)
Intel: Chips in brains will control computers by 2020
By the year 2020, you won't need a keyboard and mouse to control your computer, say Intel Corp. researchers, who are close to gaining the ability to build brain sensing technology into a headset that culd be used to manipulate a computer, working with associates at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.
Their next step is development of a tiny, far less cumbersome sensor that could be implanted inside the brain. (Source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9141180/Intel_Chips_in_brains_will_control_computers_by_2020)
New Fast Company: The Meowtrix
My new Fast Company essay is now up, looking at the news that IBM researchers have produced a cortical computing system with the connection complexity of a cat's brain. (My original title is shown here on the illustration; the replacement title is a bit inaccurate and I've suggested a replacement, so let's just move along.) It's a follow-up to the research from a couple of years ago on a mouse-scale brain simulation; we're still on-target for a human-level brain connection simulation by 2020.
All of the stories about this, including my own, have emphasized the cat brain aspect, but in reality the truly nifty development is the improved ability to map brain structures using advanced MRI and supercomputer modeling.
Ultimately, this is a very interesting development, both for the obvious reasons (an artificial cat brain!) and because of its associated "Blue Matter" project, which uses supercomputers and magnetic resonance to non-invasively map out brain structures and connections. The cortical sim is intended, in large part, to serve as a test-bed for the maps gleaned by the Blue Matter analysis. The combination could mean taking a reading of a brain and running the shadow mind in a box.Science fiction writers will have a field day with this, especially if they develop a way to "write" neural connections, and not just read them. Brain back-ups? Shadow minds in a box, used to extract secret knowledge? Hypercats, with brains operating at a thousand times normal speed? The mind reels.
The phrase "shadow minds" should be familiar to anyone who read the Transhuman Space game books -- this is almost exactly what the game talked about, and on an even more aggressive schedule!
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