nano  2008-01-20 10:12  

Jan. 16, 2008 -- It may walk like a Japanese robot, but it's thinking like a monkey in the United States. Japanese and U.S. researchers said Wednesday they have created a humanoid robot that acts according to the brain activity of a monkey all the way across the Pacific.

The experiment was part of efforts to develop prosthetic limbs which can be mentally controlled by people with disabilities.

A laboratory in the western Japanese city of Kyoto unveiled a 62-inch-tall humanoid, with a friendly-looking face including bulging black eyes, who walked via signals coming into its legs through wires.

Researchers said the robot was responding to the cortical brain activity of a monkey that was walking attached to wires on a treadmill at Duke University in North Carolina. The signal was sent via the Internet.

"We were able to detect the monkey's brain activity while walking on the treadmill and relay the data from the United States to Japan," the state-backed Japan Science and Technology Agency said in a statement.

"For the first time in the world, we were then able to make our humanoid robot in Japan walk in real-time in a similar manner as the monkey," it said.
Source

  nano  2007-12-21 09:00  

All over the world, systems that directly connect silicon circuits to brains are under development, and some are nearly ready for commercial applications, according to a new report from the World Technology Evaluation Center and announced by a news release of the University of Southern California (USC). Some of the conclusions of this report about brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are quite surprising. For example, North America researchers focus almost exclusively on invasive BCIs while noninvasive BCI systems are mostly studied in European and Asian labs. If you don’t have enough time to read the 234-page report, please look at my selection of four exciting projects from all over the world.

Before going further, here is a link to this report, “International Assessment of Research and Development in Brain-Computer Interfaces” (PDF format, 234 pages, 5.90 MB), available online on the World Technology Evaluation Center (WTEC) website. All the images below have been selected from this report.

According to USC, this report contains three overall findings on Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) work worldwide:

BCI research is extensive and rapidly growing, as is growth in the interfaces between multiple key scientific areas, including biomedical engineering, neuroscience, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, materials science and nanotechnology, and neurology and neurosurgery.
BCI research is rapidly approaching first-generation medical practice — clinical trials of invasive BCI technologies and significant home use of noninvasive, electroencephalography (EEG-based) BCIs. The panel predicts that BCIs soon will markedly influence the medical device industry, and additionally BCI research will rapidly accelerate in non-medical arenas of commerce as well, particularly in the gaming, automotive, and robotics industries.
The focus of BCI research throughout the world was decidedly uneven, with invasive BCIs almost exclusively centered in North America, noninvasive BCI systems evolving primarily from European and Asian efforts. BCI research in Asia, and particularly China, is accelerating, with advanced algorithm development for EEG-based systems currently a hallmark of China’s BCI program. Future BCI research in China is clearly developing toward invasive BCI systems, so BCI researchers in the US will soon have a strong competitor.

You can see above a picture of the Cyberhand, a project initiated at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SsSA) in Pisa, Italy. “This is a project funded by the EU Future Emerging Technology Program to develop a hierarchical, distributed-control, multiple-degrees-of-freedom robotic hand for replacement of lost limbs. The hand is designed to respond to signals from the human nervous system. It is included in the DARPA Revolutionizing Prosthetics program.” (Check the CyberHand Homepage for more details; this diagram can be found on page 82 of the report.)

Above is a “concept for a cortical prosthesis that utilizes a biomimetic model of hippocampal function and bypasses damaged regions of that structure to restore long-term memory formation.” “That project first started at the University of Southern California (USC) and now involves collaborative efforts with Wake Forest University (WFU) and the University of Kentucky (UK). […] The goal is to replace damaged regions of the hippocampus with microchip-based systems that mimic the functional properties of the lost tissue (Berger et al. 2001). The replacement silicon systems would have functional properties specific to those of the damaged hippocampal cells, and would both receive as inputs and send as outputs electrical activity to regions of the brain with which the hippocampus previously communicated.” (This diagram can be found on page 110 of the report.)

Now, here is a BCI typing feedback interface with text prediction. (Credit: Fraunhofer-Institute for Computer Architecture and Software Technology, Germany). (This diagram can be found on page 143 of the report.)

My last selection is about wearable sensory devices constructing a wearable humanoid without muscle or skeleton. (Credit: NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Japan.) (This diagram can be found on page 202 of the report.)

Given the enormous quantity of information contained in this report, would you have chosen other projects? Drop me a note.

Sources: Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, December 13, 2007; World Technology Evaluation Center (WTEC); and various websites

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=776

  nano  2007-09-24 05:48  

In the middle 1800s Louis Agassiz stated: "Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next they say it had been discovered before. Lastly they say they have always believed it."
Max Planck { } said: "An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning."

"The Important Skeptical Community Provides Our Watchdogs
Fortunately our scientific community has also spawned a professional watchdog Skeptical Community, which acts repeatedly and nobly to viciously attack all such crackpots and perpetual motion nuts and all such silly ideas. Our professional Skeptics thus guard the true scientific faith and the proven status quo, particularly by condemning all the wild schemes purporting to (a) offer bizarre “solutions” to the escalating “energy from oil” crisis, (b) offer the impossible production of negative entropy, (c) advance the silly notion of negative energy, etc.
Never mind that the original concept of “production of entropy by a system” merely referred to that system’s dissipation and loss—without replacement—of its initial usable, ordered excess potential energy. And yes, that would seem to mean that simple potentialization of a system is—with respect to that system—production of negative entropy by (in) it. But today no self-respecting thermodynamicists define it that way, even though the negative of “production of positive entropy” (depotentialization) is “production of negative entropy” (potentialization). Only “rogue” or very confused thermodynamicists even think such thoughts! Not to worry!"

Read the rest of Beardens article

  nano  2007-09-02 09:23  

Source
WASHINGTON - Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they're getting closer.

Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of "wet artificial life."

"It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. "We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways — in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict."

That first cell of synthetic life — made from the basic chemicals in DNA — may not seem like much to non-scientists. For one thing, you'll have to look in a microscope to see it.

"Creating protocells has the potential to shed new light on our place in the universe," Bedau said. "This will remove one of the few fundamental mysteries about creation in the universe and our role."

And several scientists believe man-made life forms will one day offer the potential for solving a variety of problems, from fighting diseases to locking up greenhouse gases to eating toxic waste.

Bedau figures there are three major hurdles to creating synthetic life:

• A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out, allow good ones, and the ability to multiply.

• A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell, enabling it to reproduce and mutate in response to environmental changes.

• A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as food and then changes it into energy.

One of the leaders in the field, Jack Szostak at Harvard Medical School, predicts that within the next six months, scientists will report evidence that the first step — creating a cell membrane — is "not a big problem." Scientists are using fatty acids in that effort.

Szostak is also optimistic about the next step — getting nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, to form a working genetic system.

His idea is that once the container is made, if scientists add nucleotides in the right proportions, then Darwinian evolution could simply take over.

"We aren't smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do the hard work and then we figure out what happened," Szostak said.

In Gainesville, Fla., Steve Benner, a biological chemist at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution is attacking that problem by going outside of natural genetics. Normal DNA consists of four bases — adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine (known as A,C,G,T) — molecules that spell out the genetic code in pairs. Benner is trying to add eight new bases to the genetic alphabet.

Bedau said there are legitimate worries about creating life that could "run amok," but there are ways of addressing it, and it will be a very long time before that is a problem.

"When these things are created, they're going to be so weak, it'll be a huge achievement if you can keep them alive for an hour in the lab," he said. "But them getting out and taking over, never in our imagination could this happen."

(This version CORRECTS Bedau quote to "shed new light")

  nano  2007-06-27 19:52  

A moth which has a computer chip implanted in it while in the cocoon will enable soldiers to spy on insurgents, the US military hopes.

Scientists are growing flesh around computer parts to create cyborg moths, which can be controlled remotely.
Read article

  nano  2007-06-27 08:58  

Source

AN EXTRAORDINARY "hyperspace" engine that could make interstellar space travel a reality by flying into other dimensions is being investigated by the United States government.

The hypothetical device, which has been outlined in principle but is based on a controversial theory about the fabric of the universe, could potentially allow a spacecraft to travel to Mars in three hours and journey to a star 11 light years away in just 80 days, according to a report in today's New Scientist magazine.

The theoretical engine works by creating an intense magnetic field that, according to ideas first developed by the late scientist Burkhard Heim in the 1950s, would produce a gravitational field and result in thrust for a spacecraft.

Also, if a large enough magnetic field was created, the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of light is faster, allowing incredible speeds to be reached. Switching off the magnetic field would result in the engine reappearing in our current dimension.

The US air force has expressed an interest in the idea and scientists working for the American Department of Energy - which has a device known as the Z Machine that could generate the kind of magnetic fields required to drive the engine - say they may carry out a test if the theory withstands further scrutiny.

Professor Jochem Hauser, one of the scientists who put forward the idea, told The Scotsman that if everything went well a working engine could be tested in about five years.

However, Prof Hauser, a physicist at the Applied Sciences University in Salzgitter, Germany, and a former chief of aerodynamics at the European Space Agency, cautioned it was based on a highly controversial theory that would require a significant change in the current understanding of the laws of physics.

"It would be amazing. I have been working on propulsion systems for quite a while and it would be the most amazing thing. The benefits would be almost unlimited," he said.

"But this thing is not around the corner; we first have to prove the basic science is correct and there are quite a few physicists who have a different opinion.

"It's our job to prove we are right and we are working on that."

He said the engine would enable spaceships to travel to different solar systems. "If the theory is correct then this is not science fiction, it is science fact," Prof Hauser said.

"NASA have contacted me and next week I'm going to see someone from the [US] air force to talk about it further, but it is at a very early stage. I think the best-case scenario would be within the next five years [to build a test device] if the technology works."

The US authorities' attention was attracted after Prof Hauser and an Austrian colleague, Walter Droscher, wrote a paper called "Guidelines for a space propulsion device based on Heim's quantum theory".

  nano  2007-06-20 11:54  

Boikott Telenor sier jeg. Det må da være andre måter - kommer andre måter hvor vi kan gå uteom Telenor og deres linjer.
Les mer

  nano  2007-06-20 11:11  

Michael Moores new movie

Skulle bare mangle, vi burde ha fri legehjelp for alle. Det er ikke noe problem om myndighetene og de som har tilrana seg ressursene og blitt rike på bekostning av oss andre, gav noe tilbake!!

  nano  2007-06-19 15:05  

Er ikke naturen flott dere! For denne mannen har ikke hatt det vondt nei. Stakkars menneske!! Les mer

  nano  2007-06-14 22:35  

How to cure diseases like cancer with new technology! Technology that already exist!

See video

  nano  2007-06-14 22:22  

See video

  nano  2007-06-14 20:19  

(85 slides - includes Cold Fusion)
Read it all!

  nano  2007-06-14 20:16  

Siden vi er i farta på energi fronten!
10 TRILLION PERCENT OF THE CURRENT PRODUCED IS WASTED!

  nano  2007-06-14 20:12  

Flaws in Classical EM Theory
1. Eliminates the Internal EM Inside the
Scalar Potential.

2. No Definition of Electrical Charge or
of Scalar Potential.

3. Equations Still Assume Material Ether
Per Maxwell (Unchanged).

4. Use of Force Fields in Vacuum is False
(and Known to be So).

5. Treats Charge q as Unitary Instead of
Coupled System q=ø(q)m(q).

6. Confuses Massless Potential Gradients
as Forces (See #3, #4).

7. Does Not Utilize Mass as a Component
of Force (See #23).

8. Erroneously Assumes EM Force Field as
Primary Causes.

9. Topology of EM Model Has Been Substantially
Reduced.

10. Does Not Include Quantum Potential or Action
at a Distance.

11. Does Not Include Superluminal Velocity of Inner
EM Components.

12. Does Not Utilize Extended Near-Field Coulomb
Gauge Effects.

13. Does Not Include EM Generatrix Mechanism
For Time Flow.

14. Does Not Unify Photon and Wave Aspects
(Requires 7-D Model).

15. Does Not Include Electron Spin and Precession
(See #19, #24).

16. Treats EM Energy As Existing in "Chunks,"
Instead of as Flow.

17. Confuses Energy and Energy Collection
(See #16).

18. Discards Half of Every EM Wave in Vacuum
(See #22).

19. Erroneously Uses Transverse Vacuum Wave;
It's Quasi-Longitudinal.

20. Arbitrarily Regauges Maxwell's Equations to
Eliminate Overunity Maxwellian Systems.

21. Omits Phase Conjugate Optics Effects
(Which are the Rule in Internal EM).

22. Does Not Include EM Cause of Newtonian
Reaction Force.

23. Erroneously Assumes Separate Force Acting
on Separate Mass.

24. Confuses Detected Electron Precession Waves
as Proving Transverse EM Waves in Vacuum
(Remnant of Old "EM Fluid" Concept).

25. Due to Error in String Wave, Omits the
Ubiquitous Antiwave.

26. Assumes Equilibrium; Not True Unless Include
Vacuum Interactions.

27. Higher Toplogy Required, to Model
Electromagnetic Reality.

28. Lorentz surface integration discards Poynting
energy transport.

29. Has nothing at all to say about form of
EM entities in massless space.

30. Eliminates the infolded general relativity using
EM-force as curve agent.

31. Does not include longitudinal EM wave phase
conjugate pairs as time domain oscillations.

32. Does not include EM mechanism that generates
time flow and flow rate.

33. Does not include time-excitation charging
and decay.

34. Does not include time-reversal zones.

@ T.E.BEARDEN 1999N

  nano  2007-06-08 04:55  

Listen to the show!

  nano  2007-04-21 11:34  

Ted Berger has spent the past decade engineering a brain implant that can re-create thoughts. The chip could remedy everything from Alzheimer’s to absent-mindedness—and reduce memory loss to nothing more than a computer glitch Read the full story

  nano  2007-03-15 20:41  

DEAN KARNAZES WAS SLOBBERING DRUNK. IT WAS HIS 30TH BIRTHDAY, and he'd started with beer and moved on to tequila shots at a bar near his home in San Francisco. Now, after midnight, an attractive young woman – not his wife – was hitting on him. This was not the life he'd imagined for himself. He was a corporate hack desperately running the rat race. The company had just bought him a new Lexus. He wanted to vomit. Karnazes resisted the urge and, instead, slipped out the bar's back door and walked the few blocks to his house. On the back porch, he found an old pair of sneakers. He stripped down to his T-shirt and underwear, laced up the shoes, and started running. It seemed like a good idea at the time...
Read the whole article

  nano  2007-03-15 20:31  

Improving human performance

  nano  2007-03-15 20:22  

Source

Scientists plan to test an implanted chip with four times the resolution of the previous version in people blinded by retinal degeneration.

By Emily Singer

On Thursday, scientists at the University of Southern California (USC) announced their plans to test an improved retinal implant in blind patients. The new implant, which scientists hope will improve patients' vision even more, has four times the resolution of the previous version.

"My expectation, without really knowing what is going to happen, is that this will be useful for people in allowing them to find a lit doorway or the edge of an object when going into a room," says James Weiland, a scientist at USC involved in the project.

People with retinal-degeneration diseases, such as retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration, lose their sight as the cells in the eye that normally sense light deteriorate. Retinal implants can take over for these lost cells, converting light into neural signals that are then interpreted by the brain. Simpler versions of these devices, developed by researchers at USC and other institutions, have already been tested in humans, giving patients rudimentary vision, such as the ability to detect light and to occasionally distinguish between simple objects. One patient, for example, wears the device to her grandson's soccer games and reports that she perceives the sensation of the players' movement as they run by, says Weiland.

The device, developed by Mark Humayun and colleagues at USC, consists of a tiny chip dotted with hair-thin electrodes. When implanted in the retina, the electrodes transmit electrical signals from the chip to neural cells in the eye, which then send the message to the brain. A wireless camera mounted on glasses and a video processing unit worn on the belt capture and process visual information from the wearer's surroundings and wirelessly transmit those signals to the chip.

The new version of the implant, which the researchers have been working on for the past eight years, has nearly quadrupled the number of electrodes--from 16 to 60--and is about half the size of the previous model. The researchers recently received permission from the Food and Drug Administration to start human tests, which they plan to begin in the next few months.

Once the device is implanted, researchers will need to do extensive tests to figure out how to optimize it. "A camera gets at least tens of thousands of pixel information, and we need to transmit that to just 60 stimulating channels," says Weiland. "We have to figure out what is the most important information to keep."

  nano  2007-03-15 20:12  

Source

Heat-resistant. Cold-proof. Tireless. Tomorrow’s soldiers are just like today’s — only better. Inside the Pentagon’s human enhancement project.

The lab is climate-controlled to 104 degrees Fahrenheit and 66 percent humidity. Sitting inside the cramped room, even for a few minutes, is an unpleasantly moist experience. I’ve spent the last 40 minutes on a treadmill angled at a 9 percent grade. My face is chili-red, my shirt soaked with sweat. My breath is coming in short, unsatisfactory gasps. The sushi and sake I had last night are in full revolt. The tiny speakers on the shelf blasting “Living on a Prayer” are definitely not helping.

Then Dennis Grahn, a lumpy Stanford University biologist and former minor-league hockey player, walks into the room. He nods in my direction and smiles at a technician. “Looks like he’s ready,” Grahn says.

Grahn takes my hand and slips it into a clear, coffeepot-looking contraption he calls the Glove. Inside is a hemisphere of metal, cool to the touch. He tightens a seal around my wrist; a vacuum begins pulling blood to the surface of my hand, and the cold metal chills my blood before it travels through my veins back to my core. After five minutes, I feel rejuvenated. Never mind the hangover. Never mind Bon Jovi. I keep going for another half hour.

The test isn’t about my endurance; it’s about the future of the American armed forces. Grahn and his colleagues developed the Glove for the military — specifically, for the Pentagon’s way-out science division, Darpa: the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. For nearly 50 years, Darpa has engineered technological breakthroughs from the Internet to stealth jets. But in the early 1990s, as military strategists started worrying about how to defend against germ weapons, the agency began to get interested in biology. “The future was a scary place, the more we looked at it,” says Michael Goldblatt, former head of Darpa’s Defense Sciences Office. “We wanted to learn the capabilities of nature before others taught them to us.”

By 2001, military strategists had determined that the best way to deal with emerging transnational threats was with small groups of fast-moving soldiers, not hulking pieces of military hardware. But small groups rarely travel with medics — they have to be hardy enough to survive on their own. So what goes on in Grahn’s dank little lab at Stanford is part of a much larger push to radically improve the performance, mental capacity, and resilience of American troops — to let them run harder and longer, operate without sleep, overcome deadly injury, and tap the potential of their unconscious minds.

  nano  2007-03-15 19:55  

Kerri Smith

source

A single frightening thought can be erased from a rat's mind.

A single, specific memory has been wiped from the brains of rats, leaving other recollections intact.

The study adds to our understanding of how memories are made and altered in the brain, and could help to relieve sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) of the fearful memories that disrupt their lives. The results are published in Nature Neuroscience1.

The brain secures memories by transferring them from short-term to long-term storage, through a process called reconsolidation. It has been shown before that this process can be interrupted with drugs. But Joseph LeDoux of the Center for Neural Science at New York University and his colleagues wanted to know how specific this interference was: could the transfer of one specific memory be meddled with without affecting others?

"Our concern was: would you do something really massive to their memory network?" says LeDoux.

To find out, they trained rats to fear two different musical tones, by playing them at the same time as giving the rats an electric shock. Then, they gave half the rats a drug known to cause limited amnesia (U0126, which is not approved for use in people), and reminded all the animals, half of which were still under the influence of the drug, of one of their fearful memories by replaying just one of the tones.

When they tested the rats with both tones a day later, untreated animals were still fearful of both sounds, as if they expected a shock. But those treated with the drug were no longer afraid of the tone they had been reminded of under treatment. The process of re-arousing the rats' memory of being shocked with the one tone while they were drugged had wiped out that memory completely, while leaving their memory of the second tone intact.

LeDoux's team also confirms the idea that a part of the brain called the amygdala is central to this process - communication between neurons in this part of the brain usually increases when a fearful memory forms, but it decreases in the treated rats. This shows that the fearful memory is actually deleted, rather than simply breaking the link between the memory and a fearful response.

Greg Quirk, a neurophysiologist from the Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico, thinks that psychiatrists working to treat patients with conditions such as PTSD will be encouraged by the step forward. "These drugs would be adjuncts to therapy," he says. "This is the future of psychiatry - neuroscience will provide tools to help it become more effective."

  nano  2006-10-22 14:34  

In the United States a black project is a top-secret military/defense project, unacknowledged by the government, military personnel, and defense contractors. Familiar examples of U.S. military aircraft developed as black projects are the F-117 stealth fighter and B-2 stealth bomber, which were highly classified and denied to exist until ready to be announced to the public.

Black programs have been criticized for violating the Receipts and Expenditures clause of the United States Constitution. Article I, Section 9, clause 7 of the United States Constitution requires the government to publish a "regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money". Because black programs are not disclosed as part of the United States official budget, critics contend that this violates the United States Constitution. Partially to dissuade critics, the United States Department of Defense sets aside a large portion of their annual budget as "the black budget". This money is said to be divided in undisclosed portions among all black projects so that a record of how much public money is expended in undisclosed ways will still be publicly available

Read more