Talking About Stuff, with Mike and Christiana

Check this out: the latest in meteorological technology.

Thanks to Dean's World.

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Wired has a preview feature of this upcoming technology expo that has some really interesting items.

I've seen a couple of these before, but most are new to me. Some of my favorites:

ROBOLOBSTER
NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY
If not for the telltale wires and hefty Darpa funding, the RoboLobster could be mistaken for the real thing. It is amphibious, has claws, and can maintain traction in heavy surf. Real crustaceans, however, take little interest in espionage and detonating mines in war zones; RoboLobsters think of little else.

PHILIP K. DICK ROBOT
HANSON ROBOTICS
Do androids really dream of electric sheep? Now you can ask P. K. Dick himself. This bust relies on 36 servomotors to mimic the sci-fi legend's facial expressions, and features a polymer called Frubber that looks and moves like human skin. The bot uses motion-tracking machine vision to make eye contact with passersby, and best of all, artificial intelligence and speech software enable it to carry on complex conversations. "It invents new ideas using a mathematical model of Philip K. Dick's mind extracted from his vast body of writing," says David Hanson, founder of Hanson Robotics. The mechanized tribute to the author is a fitting one: Having grappled with the question "What is reality?" throughout his career, Dick would have delighted in Hanson's efforts to blur the boundaries between humans and their android imitations.

BRAINBALL
INTERACTIVE INSTITUTE
Relax, it's just a game - and in Brainball, the more passive person wins. Both players wear headbands that monitor the alpha and theta waves their brains generate when they're calm. A computer converts these signals into energy that moves a ball across the table. Stay mellow to get control and drive the ball into your opponent's goal.

HUMAN PAC-MAN
MIXED REALITY LAB SINGAPORE
Don VR goggles and a backpack equipped with wireless networking, motion sensors, and GPS to superimpose Pac-Man game elements on your physical surroundings. Fellow players are turned into enemy ghosts, and the area around you is lined with virtual pellets that you gobble up to score points.

SWEET VIRGIN ANGEL
INNESPACE
What do you get when you mash up Flipper with a Jet Ski? A prototype craft that can skip over, dive into, and cruise through open water the way dolphins do. The latest model, a two-seater, performs like a star at Sea World, maneuvering at 40 miles per hour on the surface and 20 mph below. The Angel grew out of Thomas Rowe's 1970s designs for speedy boat/sub combos that he calls variable altitude submersible hydrofoils. Working with Rowe, Innespace hopes the Angel will lead to a VASH on every dock. "We'd like to get other teams out there competing with their own designs," says company cofounder Rob Innes, who thinks DIY watercraft could be shipped and sold like kit-built airplanes. Those days might be a ways off. Though the craft isn't much harder to pilot than an SUV, it can submerge only briefly, and then just to snorkel depth, as its 175-horsepower engine is an air breather.

POWER ASSIST SUIT
KANAGAWA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Nurses in Japan dig the Power Assist. Its compressed-air lifting action helps them transfer patients from one bed to another. The suit, which calculates how much air to release based on sensors taped to the wearer's muscles, has other applications, too - like the heavy-lifting tasks performed by soldiers, construction workers, and longshoremen. Keg curls, anyone?

SELF-HEALING POLYMER
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
Sure, your iPod is sleek - until you drop it and leave a scar on the case. Scientists imagine a future in which portable devices are housed in plastic that automatically repairs itself, like skin. When the self-healing polymer is cut, embedded microcapsules release a liquid agent called dicyclopentadiene. When the agent comes into contact with catalyst molecules in the plastic, it coagulates and hardens to repair the cracks. Tests of healed plastic show it's at least 90 percent as tough as its unscarred equivalent. Because the catalyst remains viable after self-repair, multiple healings are possible, offering repeated rescue for even the clumsiest geeks. And your best china could someday be just as invincible: The research team thinks a similar approach could be used to repair brittle materials like ceramic and glass.

OPTICAL CAMOUFLAGE
TOKYO UNIVERSITY
Want to blend in? In Optical Camouflage, a subject dons a coat covered with retroreflective material. A video camera records everything that's behind the person, while a projector beams the image onto the front of the jacket, making it - and the person - appear invisible. Could the trickery be any more transparent?

Some folks over at Johns Hopkins University have developed audible basketballs and nets to allow blind people to play basketball.

Three Johns Hopkins engineering undergraduates -- two of them starters on the women's basketball team -- have designed and built a system that uses sound emitters in the ball and on the backboard to enable blind people to play basketball.

"There are people all over the country who are waiting for something like this," said Mike Bullis, business services development manager for Blind Industries and Services of Maryland, a group that aids the visually impaired and sponsored the research project. "There are blind athletes who want an audible ball. And there are school- age children who can benefit from the hand coordination that comes from playing ball. Right now, blind kids can play with a ball, but only if someone is there to find it if it rolls away."

Now, clearly, a completely non-sighted person would find it pretty difficult to play a normal game of basketball even with this sort of equipment, but that's really not the point.

Instead, we need to realize that, for a blind person, the opportunities for physical activities are dramatically limited compared to a sighted person. Anything that allows them more options is a good thing in my book. Sure, they might have trouble actually playing a full game on a team, but considering how often people just "shoot hoops" rather than playing a full game, this sounds like it could still be fun, especially when you consider that the alternative is no basketball at all.

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Want one? You can buy one for just 80 bucks!

What is it, you ask? Well, check it out!



Yes, that's right. It's just like a regular keyboard, only it has nothing printed on any of the keys!

The idea behind it, I gather, is two-fold. First of all, if you don't have to look down at the keys while you type, you can improve your typing speed. Once you train yourself to do it that way, anyway.

Now, I can actually speak on this from personal experience. When I switched my keyboard over to the Dvorak layout, (because I like being contrary), I didn't buy a new keyboard, I just switched the software, meaning that the letters printed on the keys no longer corresponded to the letters they produced. Now, the Dvorak layout is a little faster than QWERTY anyway, but I think by far the majority of my increase in speed is from learning to not look down at the keys while I type.

The second idea behind Das Keyboard is just that uber-geeks can use it to show off, I think.

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Okay, fair enough.

The only thing that strikes me as odd though is that anyone would pay $80 for the thing when you could just achieve the exact same effect for 69 cents by buying some model paint the same color as your existing keyboard and painting over the letters.

For the first part of the idea, the typing training part, that would be just as good. And frankly, for the showing off part, I think a jury-rigged, hand-painted keyboard that saves money is WAY more geeky than spending $80. Those mass-produced ones are for geek wanna-be's!

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You know, on second thought, that's probably a little too much trouble for the average person to go to, so how about this. You send me your keyboard, and for only $75, plus shipping and handling, I'll paint out the letters for you! That way, you save $5 over Das Keyboard, AND you get the AUTHENTIC HAND-PAINTED blank keyboard instead of the mass-manufactured, soulless corporate gimmick. Place your orders now, just send me your credit card number and that little authorization code on the back. An authentic hand-painted blank keyboard will solve all your problems or... well, or you only wasted $75 bucks! That's nothing! The real question is, can you afford not to?

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Apparently, if you want to change your life, you should have done it last week on May 18th.

A University tutor has produced a formula which suggests May 18 is the optimum date for life-changing resolutions.

Dr Cliff Arnall, a part-time tutor in the Centre for Lifelong Learning, was challenged to find the ideal day for positive thinking.

He devised the formula M x O + Bh (H+R) x S to discover that New Year resolutions stand a better chance of success if they are made on May 18.

Under the formula M stands for motivation and O for opportunity while Bh is bank holiday proximity.

The H in the second half equals increasing hours of daylight, while R equals reflection time and S, simply success.

Dr Arnall, a specialist in happiness, motivation and confidence, hit headlines around the world in January with a formula for the most depressing day of the year — January 24.

Oh, a "specialist" in happiness, motivation and confidence, eh? I wonder what his PhD is in. Bet it's "Pop Psychology."

Hmm, I wonder if he's studied prefrontal brain damage...

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There are a couple of articles out today about the recent discovery of the parts of our brains that allow us to comprehend sarcasm.

Check this out, from the Forbes.com article.

"People with prefrontal brain damage suffer from difficulties in understanding other people's mental states, and they lack empathy," said study co-author Simone Shamay-Tsoory, a researcher at the University of Haifa. "Therefore, they can't understand what the speaker really is talking about, and get only the literal meaning."

The findings, Shamay-Tsoory said, could help rehabilitation centers do a better job of helping brain-damaged patients adjust to the world and understand other people.

In their study, Shamay-Tsoory and her colleagues first enrolled 58 subjects -- 25 participants with prefrontal-lobe damage, 17 who were healthy and 16 who had damage to the posterior lobe of the brain.

So the next time you make a snarky comment and it goes right over someone's head, don't think ill of them. It's not their fault. They're just brain-damaged, and should be pitied.

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Check it out, there's an avant-garde chef out there making... well, maybe I'd better just quote the NY Times...

HOMARO CANTU'S maki look a lot like the sushi rolls served at other upscale restaurants: pristine, coin-size disks stuffed with lumps of fresh crab and rice and wrapped in shiny nori. They also taste like sushi, deliciously fishy and seaweedy.

But the sushi made by Mr. Cantu, the 28-year-old executive chef at Moto in Chicago, often contains no fish. It is prepared on a Canon i560 inkjet printer rather than a cutting board. He prints images of maki on pieces of edible paper made of soybeans and cornstarch, using organic, food-based inks of his own concoction. He then flavors the back of the paper, which is ordinarily used to put images onto birthday cakes, with powdered soy and seaweed seasonings.

At least two or three food items made of paper are likely to be included in a meal at Moto, which might include 10 or more tasting courses. Even the menu is edible; diners crunch it up into a bowl of gazpacho, creating Mr. Cantu's version of alphabet soup.

Sometimes he seasons the menus to taste like the main courses. Recently, he used dehydrated squash and sour cream powders to match a soup entree. He also prepares edible photographs flavored to fit a theme: an image of a cow, for example, might taste like filet mignon.

Check out the whole article here. Some pretty cool stuff in there. Weird, but cool.

This is being reported in a couple of places, but here is the Wired News story about a new self-replicating robot.

A robot that makes functional copies of itself was announced this week in the journal Nature. Researchers at Cornell University's Computational Synthesis Lab say their robot is a working example of machine self-replication and evidence that self-reproduction is not unique to biology.

Be sure to check out the video!(Right Click to Save)

Now, I've been fascinated by the whole concept of self-replicating machines, usually paired with nano-scale manufacturing to create what is referred to as "nanotechnology" since 8th grade when my starry-eyed English teacher implied they were just around the corner. Truth is that the technology is still out of our reach, but this demonstrates that it's coming closer. Nanotechnology is yet another field that could provide some really wonderful boons to civilization.

Not that the technology is without its critics.

Science fiction thrillers, including Michael Crichton's novel Prey, have painted doomsday scenarios of tiny robots running amok.

Prince Charles has also expressed concern at the prospect of the planet being turned into a "grey goo" by self-replicating machines.

Now, I know that Prince Charles is usually the go-to-guy for emerging technology issues, but I think that he's off the mark here. To avoid nanotechnology research for fear of "grey goo" is akin to abandoning Genetic Engineering altogether for fear that someone will make a super-virus. You simply take precautions and it becomes a non-issue. Also, I've read Prey, and though things do go wrong in that book, it's hardly the "doomsday scenario" suggested by this article.

Anyway, I think the idea is pretty cool, and I'm anxiously waiting to hear about further advances in this area.

That said, watch that video again. You have to admit, it is a little creepy.

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No, you got your lab mouse on my human stem cell culture!

The New York Times has an editorial today about the emerging science of "chimeras", meaning the blending of one species with another, using bioengineering. This can be as simple as engineering lab rats with human genes, or even growing human organs in pigs.

Like with so many new technologies, it has a lot of potential to provide many benefits, but it does of course raise some serious ethical considerations.

For example, consider the above. In order to evaluate how stem cells become brain and nervous system tissue in vivo, (rather than in culture,) they could take these human stem cell cultures and implant them in mouse embryos. But couldn't that, in theory, lead to a human brain "trapped" inside a mouse's body?

That's just one example of many.

The editorial puts forward the idea that most of the actual experiments being done are rather mundane and that the ethical considerations for them are nearly moot, and that we run the risk of banning some very useful science with a knee-jerk reaction to experiments which are not necessarily ever going to become an issue.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to that point of view, even if I'm not as fully committed to it as the editorial writer is, but the editorial is frankly not the most persuasive writing I've seen on the subject.

To me, I find myself strongly ambivalent on the issue. The science/bioengineering geek in me thinks that the whole thing is pretty cool, and could lead to all sorts of advances in both biology and medicine. That said, I think that there are still serious ethical and moral considerations to make. Though the idea that we'll end up with a "human trapped in a mouse" is actually pretty far-fetched, the truth of the matter is that experiments like these do start to blur the lines a little between what is "animal" and what is "human".

How "human" does an organism have to be in order to qualify for the legal rights and standards associated with that classification? Chimps and dolphins for example, are pretty smart. How much smarter would they have to be before we consider them "intelligent" creatures deserving of legal protection? And can intelligence be the only determining factor? To be sure, there are some humans who, through disease or injury, have extremely limited mental capacities, get we generally consider them to have the full spectrum of human rights, (or at least, more than animals have.)

I think it can all get very tricky. How do we balance potential abuses and problems with potential benefits and advances in quality of life? It's all fine and good to say we shouldn't do this kind of research, but what if that research could eventually save hundreds or even thousands of lives? I don't know the answer, but you can bet I'll be following the debate.

NASA Chief Speeds Plan for Spacecraft

Less than a month after taking the job, NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin is pushing an ambitious but risky plan to shave four years off the timetable for building a next-generation spaceship to replace the space shuttle, and wants to launch it with a crew by the end of 2010.

The original plan called for the craft to be ready by 2014, so this is practically cutting the development time in half! It seems really aggressive to me, given something this complex, but at the same time, I hope it really works out, because, well, because spaceships are cool.

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Jody over at PolySciFi directs us to a new article telling us that Single Malt Whisky can protect you from cancer!

Single malt whisky can beat the threat of cancer, thanks to high levels of a powerful antioxidant that kills cancer cells, a medical conference in Scotland was told.

Of course there are always party poopers...

Lesley Walker of Cancer Research UK was dubious.

"There is considerable data documenting the link between drinking excess alcohol and the increased risk of a number of cancers, particularly in smokers," she said.

"Ellagic acid is a powerful antioxidant, but that does not mean it is necessary to hit the bottle," she said, noting that the ellagic acid can also be found in soft fruits.

However, this person's bias is clearly demonstrated by their suggestion that people should eat soft fruits instead of drinking heavily. To me, that suggests a lack of credibility.

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According to this story, the air is cleaner, and it's going to make global warming WORSE!

Reductions in industrial emissions in many countries, along with the use of particulate filters for car exhausts and smoke stacks, seem to have reduced the amount of dirt in the atmosphere and made the sky more transparent.

That sounds like very good news. But the researchers say that more solar energy arriving on the ground will also make the surface warmer, and this may add to the problems of global warming. More sunlight will also have knock-on effects on cloud cover, winds, rainfall and air temperature that are difficult to predict.

It's stories like this that just demonstrate more than ever the fact that we as humans just have no actual understanding of the things that drive the climate. Whenever I hear someone using some computer model to predict what the climate will be in fifty, or even ten years, I just want to slap them silly.

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Just continuing on the cyberization discussion about eyes, check out this news story about advanced tinted contact lenses for tennis players.

Nike, which sponsors Rooney, along with other players including Thierry Henry, Robbie Keane and Ronaldo, is testing coloured contact lenses for top players.

The firm says red, yellow and amber lenses can help them see the ball better, particularly in bright sunlight.

Brian Roberts, of US basketball team Baltimore Orioles, who has tested the lenses, said: "They're like wearing sunglasses without wearing sunglasses. I could see such a huge difference right away."

On the face of it, it may not seem as high-tech as the electronic retinas, but if you think about it, it's still using modern technology, to artificially enhance vision.


It's just another step down that road.

Oh, and how can you not love this?

Graves also discovered another benefit - they can intimidate opponents. "They make you look kind of evil," he said. "Other players look at you like you're possessed."

Wired News has an interesting article today about a new artificial cybernetic retina that gives limited sight to people who had been totally blind.

What's exciting about this is not so much the existing device, but that it's a first step toward better technologies. The model they tested had 16 electrodes in a four by four grid, and it allows patients to detect light and motion. Later this year, they'll be testing a model with 60 electrodes that is 1/4th the size of the current model. It won't be too long before they may have models that will give people vision as good as that enjoyed by people with no eye problems whatsoever.

But then, what happens when the technology advances to the point where it can give people vision that is better than normal? Alongside some of the new technologies that allow people to control robotic arms and so on with mental commands, we are really beginning to see what had previously only been science-fiction.

It may not be long when the term "cyborg" is not something out of a movie, but someone you know.

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Over at Wired News, they've got a fun article about the advances in animal augmentation technology.

Now while there are no doubt some serious implications of all this, the article, and many of the ideas presented are actually pretty silly.

On tap for the future: Rodents zooming around with night-vision survival goggles, squirrels hoarding nuts using GPS locators and fish armed with metal detectors to avoid the angler's hook.

Auger's current ambitions are relatively modest. He's developing a LED light that aims to translate tail wagging into plain English. The device fits on a dog's tail, and flashes text messages when the tail waves through the air. He plans to have a working product on display at Harrods in London by September.

Still, his point is not so much about the actual application of these specific ideas as much as the philosophical concept of using technology to "enhance" animals.

There are some legitimate questions on the table. Consider the following:

Future technologies, though, could yield fruit. For example, some theorists have floated a Matrix-like scenario that would use direct stimulation of the brain to fool livestock about the reality of their living conditions.

"To offset the cruelty of factory-farming, routine implants of smart microchips in the pleasure centers may be feasible," says David Pearce, associate editor of the Journal of Evolution and Technology. "Since there is no physiological tolerance to pure pleasure, factory-farmed animals could lead a lifetime of pure bliss instead of misery. Unnatural? Yes, but so is factory farming. Immoral? No, certainly not compared to the terrible suffering we inflict on factory-farmed animals today."

One of the people quoted in the article actually suggests that we may have some moral obligation to give some of these critters a helping hand:

"With children, the insane and the demented we are obliged, when we can, to help these 'disabled citizens' to achieve or regain their full self-determination," says Dr. James J. Hughes, executive director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and author of Citizen Cyborg. "We have the same responsibility to enhance the intelligence and communication abilities of great apes, and possibly also of dolphins and elephants, when we have the means to do so. Once they are sufficiently enhanced, they can make decisions for themselves, including removing their augmentation."

It's a fun article, you should check it out. And make sure that you check out the photos too. Verry fun.