Category Archives: technology

Monkey-Brain-Robot-Texture-Feedback-WTF

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My crazy last week made it so I didn’t see this until today but HOLY CRAP! The monkeys! The horror!

Okay, no real horror, more like fascination and curiosity. Scientists have created a situation where monkeys can control a robotic arm using only their brains. But that isn’t news. The news is, they’ve found a way for those monkey brains to receive sensory feedback from the robot arm. In other words, touch the furry thing with the robot arm, it feels different than touching the slimy thing. I repeat… HOLY CRAP!

Naturally, we won’t waste this technology on monkeys. It’s going to be a long time before the system is ready for human use, and I’m sure everyone will focus on the military application, but I love the idea of what this could offer the field of prosthetics. We’ve already seen huge leaps and bounds in this field, but how much more effective could a prosthetic limb be if there was a two way stream of communication?

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Coolest Theoretical Nighttime Headgear Ever

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Okay, it’s not exactly available yet or anything, but holy crap on a cracker does this ever look intriguing! The title of the article says it all: Scientists Reconstruct Brains’ Visions Into Digital Video In Historic Experiment. In short, some scientists at UC Berkeley have developed a tool that reads your brain’s chemical activity as you look at things and then constructs a video of them. Obviously, this is technology in its infancy, and the quality isn’t that high, but THEY CAN SEE INSIDE YOUR HEAD! Does it matter if you aren’t getting it in HD? FOR SERIOUS?

It brings all sorts of amazing ideas into my brain (which then you could see if I had one of those machines!)… Mental Dictaphones, for example. You strap on the ole’ top hat and record yourself brainstorming a thought to review later… A night appliance that tracks our dreams, for those of us who rarely remember them but are often inspired creatively by them… Those cool SQUID things from Strange Days…

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Facebook and the Mystery of the Web of Trust

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On the surface, Web Of Trust is a very good idea, and the integration with Facebook offers us the opportunity to keep ourselves safe from the scoundrels. With the success of Facebook, it is obviously a holy grail for those who would seek to take advantage of people.

What’s that? What’s Web Of Trust? I hadn’t heard of it either until I saw this piece at Skeptic North and read Facebook’s announcement. Essentially, what we’re talking about is a system that warns us based on the likelihood that the sites are are linked to are dubious.

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Impulse Control

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I’ve thought a lot about impulse control lately. Having a daughter move in with you who has ADHD will have that kind of effect on a person. I’ve been thinking about the brain chemistry behind it, the free will behind it, the brain chemistry of free will… it’s been a blast of distinct but inter-related thoughts, and just now I got another jolt from another distinct area.

What the hell are we doing to our children? Dear God, think of the children!

I just read an article in the Calgary Herald called How many teens have “Internet addiction”, a condition I am now lovingly calling the Tube Sweats. It’s an interesting notion, that teens are experiencing what they call problematic internet use, and whether or not that ties to teenage depression and drug use. For the record, they didn’t find a relationship.

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Fake Leaf Is Awesome And Makes Me Think Of Energy

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Scientists have created a fake leaf. I imagine that if I said this to 100 people on the streets of My Home Town, I would probably get at least a handful of people telling me that science is wasting money doing stupid things like inventing leaves when God already invented them, and they work great. Those people couldn’t be more wrong.

An artificial leaf isn’t what you might think. It is a photosynthesis device, and that’s where things get a whole lot more nifty in this story. What scientists built was a cost effective doohickey that uses sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen and create energy. That’s essentially what leaves do, but for the first time, we’re doing it better. By an order of magnitude.

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MKids Goes Mobile

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If you’ve ever tried to view meddlingkids.org on your mobile, experienced the horror and then quickly decided against it,  you may want to try again.

Mobile users should now see a swanky new interface that will make viewing our posts (mostly Jim’s) a little easier on your iPhone, Blackberry or Android.

Many thanks to the developers @BraveNewCode for making the whole process so simple.

New MKids mobile interface

Menu is accessible here

Viruses… They Aren’t Just For Making You Sick Anymore!

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The first time I ever heard about the idea of a positive virus, I had to double-take. It was a computer reference, and the idea was that someone could theoretically create a self-replicating piece of code that would do something good for you. This seemed ridiculous until you consider the possible applications of this sort of technology. A computer virus could be written that moves within a company’s network to do things like fixing a security hole in an application or setting. If it was written properly, there would be no threat to the company and for some issues, it might present a cleaner and less frustrating fix process than asking users to install a newer version of software. And that’s just one example.

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Prick-Free Penetration for Pharmaceuticals

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Science is routinely criticized for spending billions of dollars on useless and boring things like quantum string theory research or the mundane discovery of hundreds of planets in other solar systems, while neglecting to create anything useful.

Well criticize this, critics!

Looks like a team of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University have joined forces like Voltron to create something we can all get really excited about. The Dissolvable Vaccine Delivery Patch!

My lack of techno-naming creativity aside, there is some amazing science behind this thing. It’s even touted as being a more effective method of delivery than your traditional “sharp-pointy-object-jabbing-into-muscle” method!  This short article explains it nicely ..

So, in the very near future you’ll go into the doctor to do your herd-immunity duty and instead of getting a round of vaccination shots, she’ll just slap a patch on your arm (or your ass, preferably?) and send you out the door. Brilliant. Even the staunchest anti-vaxxer can get behind that.

The future is now, people.

BoyInfidel

True Lies

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Okay, this is just a good read and I had to share it. Letters Of Note is a site I hit up most days because of the interesting content of the site. It’s basically a storehouse of correspondence between public figures or on events of public note, and often shows a different side to things that we normally aren’t lucky enough to see.

This particular entry is from Aldrich Ames (pictured), a spy who sold out US agents working in the USSR for a big pile of money. He was eventually caught, but not after beating two lie detectors. It’s a letter from him to a fellow scientist regarding lie detectors.

I’ve always found lie detectors really interesting. From the first time I saw Superman claim that someone was lying because he could see their heart skip a beat, I wanted to understand the physiology of lying. Frankly, I’m terrible at it. And at this point in my life, I’m good with that. I’d rather be honest. That’s not to say I don’t lie, I’ve done it plenty. But I try to be good. I know people who are great liars, though. I know people who believe their own lies, incorporating them into their life as if totally true. It’s kind of creepy. And it made me wonder if there is any truth to the statement that a lie is only a lie if you don’t believe it.

This letter is an intriguing look into the mind of Ames, and an interesting slap in the face of what is often considered an absolutely scientific means of interrogation.

It makes me think how interesting it would be to do an experiment of our own. We’d have to think a bit more rigorously before turning it into a real experiment, but to see if common, moderately uncomfortable questions were easier to beat depending on the setting and style of interrogator. It’d be hard to control that, but an interesting bit of fun.

Jim

And Now For Something Completely Different

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All my frustration at militants probably helped me to feel joy at this incredibly awesome story that I hope you too will enjoy.

A father has a daughter who has Cerebral Palsy. It is very difficult for her to communicate her needs to her parents, and this is a source of much frustration for all parties. But Dad is clearly a creative thinker who sees this as something he can work through. He looked around for something for his iPhone that would help, and when he didn’t find a solution, he built one called iComm.

Now, his daughter has pictures on the iPhone (featuring herself, to make them clearly understandable to her) that depict various activities. She can point out pictures using her eyes that reflect what she is wanting, things like food or toys, etc., and the iPhone announces what she is wanting.

Frankly, that’s just a beautiful story of technology and creative problem solving coming together to enrich a life, and in this case, potentially enrich thousands of lives. To coin a phrase from the A-Team’s Hannibal, I love it when a plan comes together.

Jim