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At some point in the next decade, if advances in biotechnology continue on their current path, clones of extinct species such as the passenger pigeon, Tasmanian tiger and wooly mammoth could once again live among us. But cloning lost species—or “de-extinction” as some scientists call it—presents us with myriad ethical, legal and regulatory questions that must be answered, such as which (if any) species should be brought back and whether or not such creatures could be allowed to return to the wild. Such questions are set to be addressed at the TEDx DeExtinction conference, a day-long event in Washington, D.C., organized by Stewart Brand’s Revive & Restore project. Brand previewed the topics for discussion last week at the TED2013 conference in Long Beach, Calif. Scientists are actively working on methods and procedures for bringing extinct species back to life, says Ryan Phelan, executive director of Revive & Restore and co-organizer of the TEDx event. “The technology is moving fast. What Stewart and I are trying to do with this meeting is for the first time to allow the public to start thinking about this. We’re going to hear from people who take it quite seriously. De-extinction is going to happen, and the questions are how does it get applied, when does it get used, what are the criteria which are going to be set?” Cloning extinct species has been tried before—with moderate success. An extinct Pyrenean ibex, or bucardo, (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica) was born to a surrogate mother goat in 2009, nine years after the last member of its species was killed by a falling tree. The cloned animal lived for just seven minutes. Revive & Restore itself has launched a project to try to resurrect the passenger pigeon, which went extinct in 1914. More: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/03/passenger-pigeon-de-extinction/
Take a walk through a human brain? Fly over the surface of Mars? Computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago are pushing science fiction closer to reality with a wraparound virtual world where a researcher wearing 3-D glasses can do all that and more. In the system, known as CAVE2, an 8-foot-high screen encircles the viewer 320 degrees. A panorama of images springs from 72 stereoscopic liquid crystal display panels, conveying a dizzying sense of being able to touch what's not really there. As far back as 1950, sci-fi author Ray Bradbury imagined a children's nursery that could make bedtime stories disturbingly real. "Star Trek" fans might remember the holodeck as the virtual playground where the fictional Enterprise crew relaxed in fantasy worlds. The Illinois computer scientists have more serious matters in mind when they hand visitors 3-D glasses and a controller called a "wand." Scientists in many fields today share a common challenge: How to truly understand overwhelming amounts of data. Jason Leigh, co-inventor of the CAVE2 virtual reality system, believes this technology answers that challenge. "In the next five years, we anticipate using the CAVE to look at really large-scale data to help scientists make sense of that information. CAVEs are essentially fantastic lenses for bringing data into focus," Leigh said. The CAVE2 virtual world could change the way doctors are trained and improve patient care, Leigh said. Pharmaceutical researchers could use it to model the way new drugs bind to proteins in the human body. Car designers could virtually "drive" their vehicle designs. Imagine turning massive amounts of data – the forces behind a hurricane, for example – into a simulation that a weather researcher could enlarge and explore from the inside. Architects could walk through their skyscrapers before they are built. Surgeons could rehearse a procedure using data from an individual patient. But the size and expense of room-based virtual reality systems may prove insurmountable barriers to widespread use, said Henry Fuchs, a computer science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who is familiar with the CAVE technology but wasn't involved in its development. While he calls the CAVE2 "a national treasure," Fuchs predicts a smaller technology such as Google's Internet-connected eyeglasses will do more to revolutionize medicine than the CAVE. Still, he says large displays are the best way today for people to interact and collaborate.
As an asteroid roughly half as large as a football field readies for a fly-by of Earth on Friday, February 15, 2013, two scientists are unveiling a system that could—in one hour—eliminate a threat of this size.
The same system could destroy asteroids 10 times larger than the one known as2012 DA14 in about a year, with evaporation starting at a distance as far away as the Sun. Philip M. Lubin, a physicist and professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Gary B. Hughes, a researcher and professor from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, conceived DE-STAR, or Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids an exploRation, as a realistic means of mitigating potential threats posed to the Earth by asteroids and comets. “We have to come to grips with discussing these issues in a logical and rational way,” says Lubin, who began work on DE-STAR a year ago. “We need to be proactive rather than reactive in dealing with threats. “Duck and cover is not an option. We can actually do something about it and it’s credible to do something. So let’s begin along this path. Let’s start small and work our way up. There is no need to break the bank to start.” Described as a “directed energy orbital defense system,” DE-STAR is designed to harness some of the power of the sun and convert it into a massive phased array of laser beams that can destroy, or evaporate, asteroids posing a potential threat to Earth. It is equally capable of changing an asteroid’s orbit—deflecting it away from Earth, or into the Sun—and may also prove to be a valuable tool for assessing an asteroid’s composition, enabling lucrative, rare-element mining. And it’s entirely based on current essential technology.
Automation has displaced a lot of workers in the last 50 years, and it’s set to displace a lot more of them—taxicab and truck drivers, once vehicles drive themselves; much of what remains of manufacturing and assembly work and maybe even a lot of construction labor; fewer lawyers and doctors, once Watson-like software is perfected; teaching, except for the few people making the videos that everyone else learns from. Will we even need waitresses, or just people to bring out the food that we’ve ordered ourselves, once iPads replace menus? The endgame here is the so-called singularity—the point at which technological development, spurred by Moore’s Law and another generation or two of software and robotics development, is so sophisticated that humans have become irrelevant. An article in The Atlantic Monthly, back in October, by Rice University professor Moshe Vardi, tackled the question of whether that future is inevitable, and if so, what will it be like. He wrote: “[Artificial intelligence’s] inexorable progress over the past 50 years suggests that Herbert Simon was right when he wrote in 1956, ‘Machines will be capable...of doing any work a man can do.’” Vardi continued, “I do not expect this to happen in the very near future, but I do believe that by 2045, machines will be able to do if not any work that humans can do, then a very significant fraction of the work that humans can do.”
How much would you like to see humanity travel back to the moon? Or for that matter, how much would you like to stand amongst the craters of Lacus Somnorium yourself and look up to see your home planet above you, a shining blue marble in the darkness? Since Apollo 17 left the Moon in 1972, no humans have traveled further than a few hundred kilometers from Earth’s surface, but an ambitious space travel company has plans to put humans back on the moon — and they’ll take anyone who can afford the asking price. The Golden Spike Company, formally announced in December last year, are aiming to provide a means to do exactly that. Riding the wave of enthusiasm for private space flight, they intend to provide reliable transport to the surface of the moon. However, with the cost of the tickets currently expected to be the princely sum of $1.5 billion for a two person mission, their customers are more likely to be governments than wealthy tourists. Named after the ceremonial “last spike” driven into the first continental railroad to be built in the US, Golden Spike’s intention is, quoting from their website, to “transform human space exploration by putting in place affordably priced lunar orbital and surface expeditions to the only natural satellite of the Earth — the moon,” in much the same way the railroad enabled people to travel across North America in the 19th century. The expected cost of a two person lunar mission for $1.5 billion, while clearly astronomical for private travelers, is an attractive price for government space programs across the world.
After years of research, the first bionic eye has seen the light of day in the United States, giving hope to the blind around the world. Developed by Second Sight Medical Products, the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System has helped more than 60 people recover partial sight, with some experiencing better results than others. Consisting of 60 electrodes implanted in the retina and glasses fitted with a special mini camera, Argus II has already won the approval of European regulators. The US Food and Drug Administration is soon expected to follow suit, making this bionic eye the world's first to become widely available. "It's the first bionic eye to go on the market in the world, the first in Europe and the first one in the U.S.," said Brian Mech, the California-based company's vice president of business development. Those to benefit from Argus II are people with retinitis pigmentosa, a rare genetic disease, affecting about 100,000 people in the U.S., that results in the degeneration of the retinal photoreceptors. The photoreceptor cells convert light into electrochemical impulses that are transmitted to the brain via the optic nerve, where they are decoded into images. "The way the prosthesis works (is) it replaces the function of the photoreceptors," Mech told AFP. Thirty people aged 28 to 77 took part in the clinical trial for the product, all of whom were completely blind. Mech said the outcomes varied by participant. "We had some patients who got just a little bit of benefit and others who could do amazing things like reading newspaper headlines," he said.
The TUG robot, and the company that makes it—Aethon—is the creation of a group of engineers and a man, Aethon CEO Aldo Zini, who saw the robot's potential as a high-tech hospital worker that could move medicine, food, test samples, and even laundry from floor to floor quickly, effectively, and autonomously. Simply put, the TUG is a transporter, taking items from here to there inside a hospital—items as precious as cancer drugs that cost thousands of dollars per pill, as noxious as medical waste, as delicious as trays of meals, and as cumbersome as 200 pounds of laundry. Hospital staff deploy the TUG units from a touch screen at their "bay" where they are stored, waiting in their charging stations. They can also be summoned and tracked via a Web interface. Once the items are loaded into the cart and secured, the TUG unit is off on its journey, riding elevators, navigating hallways—careful not to bump into walls, patients, or nurses speed-walking on their rounds. They perform a necessary function, a function that used to pull valuable doctors, nurses, and researchers away from their primary duties, wasting untold man hours. The main part of a TUG unit is essentially a motorized autonomous robot mounted to a secured cart. Physically a TUG looks like a granddaddy Roomba, measuring 7.25 by 20 inches (HW) and weighing 55 pounds. Its body is made of high-impact, abrasion-resistant ABS plastic. It is driven by two 24 VDC (volts of direct current) motors and four standard 12-volt lead-acid batteries. TUG can detect people and objects using a matrix of "light whiskers" that employ sonar, infrared, and laser technologies. Its onboard computer (with custom-made motherboards and Intel processors) stores an AutoCAD map of the hospital to help it get around. In terms of securing TUG's payload and the robots themselves, Zini says that the robots are more safe and reliable than human messengers. The cabinet on a TUG unit requires thumbprint identification and a key code to get inside. The robots are monitored 24-7 with onboard cameras. If anyone tried to remove a TUG from the hospital, it would immediately trigger an alarm. http://tinyurl.com/bfl5nog
The rise in reported cases of people being born with high-functioning conditions on the Autism Spectrum indicate a possible evolutionary trait: a mutation that enhances the ability of the most powerful tool the human animal has – its mind –giving rise to Savants and people with Asperger’s Syndrome. Instead of working toward a cure for ASD, we should be harnessing the collective power of some of these genius minds to fundamentally change our society. We need to evolve or die. Please keep in mind that there are a great many people with autism who are entirely non-verbal or unable to communicate in any way. They are often misdiagnosed as severely retarded and go to special schools or homes. For people with this magnitude of autism, life is extremely difficult, as it is for their caregivers. Research must continue to provide adequate treatment for these types of severe autism. Perhaps the most important question for anybody who proclaims themselves to be a transhumanist. It is also perhaps the oldest question posed in philosophy, art, science and religion. This question has only four words. “What makes us human?”
Stem cells can be extracted from bone marrow five days after death to be used in life-saving treatments Dead bodies can provide organs for transplants, now they might become a source of stem cells too. Huge numbers of stem cells can still be mined from bone marrow five days after death to be potentially used in a variety of life-saving treatments. Human bone marrow contains mesenchymal stem cells, which can develop into bone, cartilage, fat and other cell types. MSCs can be transplanted and the type of cell they form depends on where they are injected. Cells injected into the heart, for example, can form healthy new tissue, a useful therapy for people with chronic heart conditions. Unlike other tissue transplants, MSCs taken from one person tend not to be rejected by another's immune system. In fact, MSCs appear to pacify immune cells. It is this feature which has made MSC treatments invaluable for children with graft-versus-host disease, in which transplants aimed at treating diseases such as leukaemia attack the child instead. Stem cell therapies require a huge numbers of cells though, and it can be difficult to obtain a sufficient amount from a living donor. Could cadavers be the answer? After death, most cells in the body die within a couple of days. But since MSCs live in an environment that is very low in oxygen, Gianluca D'Ippolito and his colleagues at the University of Miami, Florida, wondered whether they might survive longer than the others. Paolo Macchiarini, who researches regenerative medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, describes the work as an excellent advance but says that the cells may not be as healthy as they seem. Their DNA may be affected by the death of surrounding tissue and exposure to cold temperatures. "We need to make sure the cells are safe," he says. Corneal stem cells taken from the eyes of fresh cadavers have already been used to treat blindness in people with eye conditions that result from injury and scarring, but Chris Mason at University College London sees a potential hurdle in using such MSCs in therapy. "The work is novel and intriguing... but it would be better to use a living donor," he says. That's partly because medical regulators oppose treating individuals with stem cells from more than one source. "You can always go back and get more stem cells from a living donor if you need them, but if you use a cadaver, you'll eventually run out."
Most augmented reality glasses incorporate a tiny projector in one arm of the spectacles. The picture is then reflected from the side into the centre of the lenses, which are etched with a reflective pattern that then beams the image into the eye. That means the image is directly incorporated into what the wearer see when looking directly ahead – unlike Google’s current incarnation of Google Glass, which puts a small video screen in the bottom right-hand corner of the right eye. That requires the wearer to look down to focus on it, taking their attention away from the view ahead. In this review, many different augmented reality vision devices are shown and their features explained. Welcome to the new world of 2013!
Series from Channel 4 featuring Sir Martin Rees. There is a fundamental chasm in our understanding of ourselves, the universe, and everything. To solve this, Sir Martin takes us on a mind-boggling journey through multiple universes to post-biological life. On the way we learn of the disturbing possibility that we could be the product of someone elses experiment.
News and features about transhumanism, Humanity Plus, H+, Humanity 2.0 and the ethical, medical and social issues associated with them. How can we enhance the human body and mind through a series of improvements already in the workings? Are cryonics, avatars and futuristic medicine providing a dilemma for transhumanists? Do military modifications give rise to an army of supersoldiers? Already existing: Cyborg cockroaches that can be remotely controlled. A bodyhacker's wish list: Sleep replacement and 3D-printed shapeshifting. Smart drugs lead to 'moral enhancement' - a chemical approach to transhumanism.
h+ Magazine is a new publication that covers technological, scientific, and cultural trends that are changing human beings in fundamental ways. Around the end of the year, media outlets regularly try to out-predict each other. Particularly in tech journalism, The Next Top Ten Trends To Watch or The Top Apps For 2012 are everywhere. They’re easy to write and get clicked and linked like crazy, so editors love these lists. Who’s to blame them? Even though most people grin smugly while doing so, they read these lists. h+ wanted to go beyond just a top 10 link list, both in breadth and depth. So they asked a bunch of peers and friends to share some thoughts. What are the main drivers of change in their respective fields, what does that mean, and what type of change do they hope for? h+ tried to capture specific insights into different fields & industries (deep knowledge), expectations (what will happen) and desires (what should happen).Among those we asked were designers, scientists, strategists, and a few people who, like us, squarely “sit in between the chairs”, as the Germans say. A big thank you to all contributors who took up the challenge: Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Dannie Jost, Georgina Voss, Mike Arauz, Sami Niemelä, Stefan Erschwendner and Tamao Funahashi.
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A 4D printing process is demoed at TED which could herald an age of self-assembled objects say experts. Many are only just getting their heads around the idea of 3D printing but scientists at MIT are already working on an upgrade: 4D printing. At the TED conference in Los Angeles, architect and computer scientist Skylar Tibbits showed how the process allows objects to self-assemble. It could be used to install objects in hard-to-reach places such as underground water pipes, he suggested. It might also herald an age of self-assembling furniture, said experts. TED fellow Mr Tibbits, from the MIT's (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) self-assembly lab, explained what the extra dimension involved. "We're proposing that the fourth dimension is time and that over time static objects will transform and adapt." The process uses a specialised 3D printer made by Stratasys that can create multi-layered materials. It combines a strand of standard plastic with a layer made from a "smart" material that can absorb water. The water acts as an energy source for the material to expand once it is printed. "The rigid material becomes a structure and the other layer is the force that can start bending and twisting it," said Mr Tibbits. "Essentially the printing is nothing new, it is about what happens after," he added. Such a process could in future be used to build furniture, bikes, cars and even buildings, he thinks. For the time being he is seeking a manufacturing partner to explore the innovation. "We are looking for applications and products that wouldn't be possible without these materials," he added. "Imagine water pipes that can expand to cope with different capacities or flows and save digging up the street."
In a world where private space industry is poised to take over, the world's first single stage to orbit spacecraft may be the privately developed Skylon spaceplane. However, rockets are also a huge financial drain on any spaceflight, being only partially reusable. Wouldn’t it be nice if it were cheaper and more economical to get to orbit? Cue the Skylon spaceplane, currently scheduled to commence test flights in 2019. Over 30 years in the making, Skylon is a vehicle being developed by British company Reaction Engines Limited, and is being built as the world’s first fully reusable spaceplane (a spacecraft that takes off and lands horizontally like a conventional aircraft). In fact, each Skylon spaceplane is intended to be reusable over 200 times — quite a drastic improvement over any space vehicle in active use today. The most notable benefit of this would be a dramatic reduction in the cost of transporting items to orbit. With current launch vehicles, it costs over $23,000 per kilogram to lift cargo into orbit. This is to cover both the cost of a huge amount of fuel, and the price of the launch vehicle itself. A reusable vehicle like Skylon would slash this price down to just over $1,000 per kilogram. Much more manageable! Creating fully reusable launch systems has been an ambition of the aerospace industry for well over half a century now. Despite plentiful research and development work and a menagerie of design concepts, no such vehicle has yet been created. The closest humanity has come so far was the Space Shuttle, where the orbiter craft and the two solid rocket engines were able to be reused — albeit only after a few months of refitting work. The ultimate aim has always been a Single Stage To Orbit (SSTO) vehicle, capable of launching directly into space from ground level, without needing to discard any rocket boosters on the way. To date, tests for Skylon’s air breathing SABRE rocket engines have proved rather successful; based on a unique design which constantly cools incoming air, SABRE engines have effectively double the efficiency of existing jet engines. Specifically developed by Reaction Engines Limited, these engines would give Skylon a top speed of over 30,000 km/h, enabling a suborbital journey from London to Sydney, Australia in approximately 4 hours. As well as being capable of reaching mach 5 for surface to surface transport, these engines allow Skylon to leave the atmosphere and enter orbit; the initial goal is to provide a cargo transport system to carry goods up to space stations by 2022, with intentions to later modify the vehicle to carry passengers. While funding has yet to be secured to complete the program, the British and European Space Agencies have given a green light to the Skylon project, announcing their confidence in the vehicle and stating that there are no impediments to further development of the project. Reaction Engines are hoping to have a working prototype flying by 2016, and aim to construct a fleet of them within the next decade. With each vehicle approximately 82 meters in length and costing slightly under $1.1 billion each, if Reaction Engines are successful then they may well revolutionize orbital transport in the near future. While it may still be too early to say anything for certain, I think we can afford ourselves a certain amount of optimism for Skylon. Things are looking very promising.
Tim Huckaby can’t sit still. During his hour-long presentation on the future of user interfaces at the recent 2013 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), he leapt from demo to demo, his enthusiasm contagious, and his constant movement making it difficult for anyone in the audience with a camera to capture him in stasis. Huckaby has good reason to be excited. The way this software expert sees it, we’re on the verge of a science-fiction-like future where doctors manipulate molecules in three-dimensional (3-D) space, augmented music players tune into your thoughts, and retailers deliver coupons in real time based on the focus of your gaze across store shelves. Huckaby is founder and chairman of California-based InterKnowlogy, as well as the current chief executive officer of Actus Interactive Software. Both companies focus on user interface (UI) development, and Huckaby’s belief in the coming rapid evolution of the UI field is based on decades of work in emerging technology. During his recent talk in Las Vegas, Huckaby was tasked with predicting what the interfaces we use to interact with computers and communications technologies will look like in five years. He didn’t stick to that time frame, but instead offered multiple examples of where UIs are headed, and how the evolution will unfold. His predictions for what’s possible within the next 10 years are mind-blowing: a functioning “holodeck” (ala the sci-fi classic Star Trek) into which holographic images are displayed; a legitimate neural-based interface offering a direct pathway between the brain and external devices; and virtual objects that extend into practically every facet of life and that behave much as they would in the natural world.
This project will develop and test a next generation digital preservation framework including tools for analysing, ingesting, managing, accessing and reusing information objects and data. The SHAMAN Integrated Project aims at developing a new framework for long-term digital preservation (more than one century) by exploring the potential of recent developments in the areas of GRID computing, federated digital library architectures, multivalent emulation and semantic representation and annotation. The researchers' vision is: "For the longer term, SHAMAN will develop radically new approaches to Digital Preservation, such as those inspired by human capacity to deal with information and knowledge, providing a sound basis and instruments for unleashing the potential of advanced ICT to automatically act on high volumes and dynamic and volatile digital content, guaranteeing its preservation, keeping track of its evolving semantics and usage context and safeguarding its integrity, authenticity and long term accessibility over time." The project plans to deliver a set of integrated tools supporting the various aspects of the preservation process: analysis/characterisation, ingestion, management, access and reuse. Work includes trials and validation of the tools in three application domains dealing with different types of objects: scientific publishing and government archives, industrial design and engineering (e.g. CAD), and e-science resources. SHAMAN's dissemination and exploitation plans aim at actively fostering outreach and take-up of results and will be tailored according to the specific needs of the scientific / academic world and of industry users. SHAMAN's work will be coordinated with other digital preservation projects and initiatives at national and international level.
Put yourself back in 1993. Could you have predicted the success of the web, tablets and smartphones, privatized space travel, the rise of terrorism, or the myriad of small changes that impact how you live today? To do that going forward and to predict our world in 2033, you need the voices of the smartest minds on the planet to spot trends in their areas of discipline and give us insight into where we are heading.
Via Szabolcs Kósa
Henry Markram wants €1 billion to model the entire human brain. Sceptics don't think he should get it. Markram's ambitions fit perfectly with those of Patrick Aebischer, a neuroscientist who became president of the EPFL in 2000 and wanted to make the university a powerhouse in both computation and biomedical research. Markram was one of his first recruits, in 2002. “Henry gave us an excuse to buy a Blue Gene,” says Aebischer, referring to a then-new IBM supercomputer optimized for large-scale simulations. One was installed at the EPFL in 2005, allowing Markram to launch the Blue Brain Project: his first experiment in integrative neuroscience and, in retrospect, a prototype for the HBP. Part of the project has been a demonstration of what a unifying model might mean, says Markram, who started with a data set on the rat cortex that he and his students had been accumulating since the 1990s. It included results from some 20,000 experiments in many labs, he says — “data on about every cell type that we had come across, the morphology, the reconstruction in three dimensions, the electrical properties, the synaptic communication, where the synapses are located, the way the synapses behave, even genetic data about what genes are expressed”. By the end of 2005, his team had integrated all the relevant portions of this data set into a single-neuron model. By 2008, the researchers had linked about 10,000 such models into a simulation of a tube-shaped piece of cortex known as a cortical column. Now, using a more advanced version of Blue Gene, they have simulated 100 interconnected columns. The effort has yielded some discoveries, says Markram, such as the as-yet unpublished statistical distribution of synapses in a column. But its real achievement has been to prove that unifying models can, as promised, serve as repositories for data on cortical structure and function. Indeed, most of the team's efforts have gone into creating “the huge ecosystem of infrastructure and software” required to make Blue Brain useful to every neuroscientist, says Markram. This includes automatic tools for turning data into simulations, and informatics tools such as http://channelpedia.net — a user-editable website that automatically collates structural data on ion channels from publications in the PubMed database, and currently incorporates some 180,000 abstracts. The ultimate goal was always to integrate data across the entire brain, says Markram. The opportunity to approach that scale finally arose in December 2009, when the European Union announced that it was prepared to pour some €1 billion into each of two high-risk, but potentially transformational, Flagship projects. Markram, who had been part of the 27-member advisory group that endorsed the initiative, lost no time in organizing his own entry. And in May 2011, the HBP was named as one of six candidates that would receive seed money and prepare a full-scale proposal, due in May 2012.
In a few years, 3D printers will become a consumer electronics commodity. Today you can buy a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic, “the latest in cutting edge personal manufacturing technology,” for $2,500. You can plug it into your computer via USB, load up some freely-available 3D modeling software, and print stuff; it really is that simple. The only real barrier to mass adoption is the initial purchase price, and the printing material itself isn’t cheap either. Both of these costs will tumble in coming years, however. Printing — or additive manufacturing — techniques will improve. 3D printers will speed up, and the choice of colors and finishes will expand. For now these magical printers are just the plaything of prototypers, inventors, and gadgeteers, but sooner rather than later they will find a place in the home. To begin with they will be attached to a family computer, but it’s safe to assume that wireless versions that can sit on the kitchen worktop won’t be far behind.
Using Hollywood movie trailers, UC Berkeley researchers have succeeded in decoding and reconstructing people's dynamic visual experiences. Against all odds, it was possible to reconstruct what people saw.
Via Sakis Koukouvis
Since the invention of radio more than a century ago, man has been broadcasting into space in the hope that any listening aliens could learn of our presence.
Yet, despite waves travelling a distance of 200 light years in all directions, they still have 118,800 light years to go until the entire Milky Way has heard the word.
In the photograph below, the small yellow dot - with the even tinier Planet Earth buried somewhere in its centre - reveals the limited extent of broadcasts since Marconi invented the radio in 1895. And, when you consider there are billions of galaxies like ours in the universe, the quest for extra-terrestrial life is not likely to end any time soon. Science blogger Adam Grossman, who created the diagram of ‘Humanity Bubble’ using a Nick Risinger’s famous image, quipped ‘This makes me feel small, sad and alone. Hold me.’
A fluid dynamic environment containing bio-generative algorithms representing plant and insect-like life-forms. The image was produced as part of the Artificial Nature project at the AlloSphere, one of the largest immersive scientific instruments in the world. The National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported AlloSphere is located at the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) building at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The AlloSphere takes scientific data that is too small to see and hear and visually and sonically magnifies it to a human scale so researchers can better analyze the data and find new patterns. Over 20 researchers can stand in the center of the sphere and be collectively immersed in multi-dimensional information. The AlloSphere infrastructure was completed in March 2007 and it is a key part of the Digital Media Center located within the CNSI. Applications for the AlloSphere include audiovisual technologies, abstract arts and art entertainment, "green" technology, computers and networking, education, nanotechnology, physics, materials science, geography and remote sensing, human perception, behavior and cognition, and medicine and telemedicine. More info about the AlloSpere is here: http://nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=121535&org=NSF
Would it be possible to integrate biological components with advanced robotics, using biological cells to do machine-like functions and interface with an electronic nervous system — in effect, creating an autonomous, multi-cellular biohybrid robot? Researchers Orr Yarkoni, Lynn Donlon, and Daniel Frankel, from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Newcastle University think so, and they’ve developed an interface to allow communication between the biological and electronic components. One of the major challenges in developing biohybrid devices is in the interface between biological and electronic components. Most cellular signals are simply not compatible with electronics. However, manipulation of signal transduction pathways is one way to interface cells with electronics. So the researchers genetically engineered protein cells from a Chinese hamster ovary to produce nitric oxide (NO) in response to visible light. Here’s how: 1. They genetically engineered the nitric oxide synthase protein eNOS by inserting a light-oxygen-voltage (LOV) domain into the gene. This created a photoactive version of the eNOS protein that could produce NO in response to excitation by visible light. 2. They attached these mutant cells to a nickel tetrasulfonated
phthalocyanine (NiTSPc)-modified platinum electrode that detected the NO and converted it into an electrical signal. In summary: The researchers converted an optical signal into a chemical signal (NO), and converted the chemical signal into an electrical signal. This signal could, in turn, be used to control a robot. Unlike solid-state photodetectors, the cells have the ability to self-reproduce and the potential to combine input signals to perform computation. With rapid advances in synthetic biology, manipulation of metabolic pathways to integrate with machinery will some day allow the development of advanced robotics, the researchers suggest.
Via Ray and Terry's
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