Hasta La Gadget!

Chalk one up for the chatterboxes. In a study spanning 18 years and more than 350,000 test subjects, researchers in Denmark have found no connection between cellphone usage and brain cancer. The landmark project, carried out by Denmark’s Institute of Cancer Epidemiology, was published online last week in the British Medical Journal, and is just the latest in a series of similarly optimistic studies. Of the 358,403 cellphone owners examined, only 356 were found to have a brain tumor, while 856 were diagnosed with cancer of the central nervous system — percentages that are comparable to those seen among non-mobile users. Even among long-term cellphone owners (13 years or more), incidence rates were not significantly higher than those observed among the general population. Hazel Nunn, head of evidence and health information at Cancer Research UK, described the study as “the strongest evidence yet that using a mobile phone does not seem to increase the risk of cancers of the brain or central nervous system in adults.” The study’s authors, however, acknowledge some shortcomings in their work, including the exclusion of “corporate subscriptions” — people who use their mobile devices for work, and who probably use them more heavily than the average consumer. They also recognized the need for longer-term research and for more child-specific studies. You can check out the article in full, at the coverage link below.

Cellphones are dangerous / not dangerous: Danish study tilts toward the latter originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 06:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Monkey mind-controlled arm: It sounds like the name of an awesomely terrible sci-fi film or a fledgling grindcore group, but it’s a very real phenomenon, and one that could pay significant dividends for paraplegics everywhere. Neurobiology professor Miguel Nicolelis and his team of researchers at Duke University recently devised a method by which monkeys (and, perhaps one day, humans) can control a virtual arm using only their brains. It’s a concept similar to what DARPA has been pursuing with its mind-controlled “Luke” arm, with one important difference: Nicolelis’ system not only allows users to remotely execute motor functions, but provides them with near-instantaneous sensory feedback, as well. Most similar techniques use electrode implants to stimulate brain activity, but this can create confusion when a patient’s brain sends and receives signals to and from a prosthetic arm. Nicolelis circumvented this problem with a new interface that can read and transmit brain signals to an artificial limb, before switching to a receptive mode in just milliseconds.

After designing the technology, Nicolelis and his colleagues tested it on two, electrode-equipped rhesus monkeys. One set of electrodes was placed in the motor cortex of each animal, with the other implanted within their brains’ sensory regions. They then trained the monkeys to look at a three identical objects on a computer screen and to “touch” each object with a virtual arm, controlled by signals sent from the brain electrodes. Only one of the three objects had a so-called “virtual texture,” which, if selected with the on-screen arm, would send a sensory signal back to the monkey’s brain (while triggering a tasty squirt of fruit juice for the lucky contestant). The two rhesus species ended up passing the test with flying colors, resulting in a “proof of principle” that Nicolelis’ system can send tactile signals to the brain in almost real-time. The scientists have already developed a way for monkeys to control the arm wirelessly, and are now embedding their technology within a full-body, mind-controlled exoskeleton for paralyzed patients, as well. Of course, the technology still needs to be tested on actual humans, though Nicolelis seems confident that he and his team have already cleared the most difficult hurdle: “Since we cannot talk to the monkeys, I assume with human patients, it’s going to be much easier.”

Monkeys control virtual arm with their brains, may herald breakthrough for paraplegics originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Oct 2011 17:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Spanish researchers have completed the first human trial of a new vaccine against HIV. It has been successful in 90% of the HIV-free volunteers during phase I testing. This vaccine brings great hope to eradicate this plague forever. More »

Barely 24 hours after we told you about printing your own bones, the franken-science continues with the announcement that blood vessels are next on the body-parts-you-can-print list. Unsurprisingly, you’ll need more than just regular toner if you want to start printing your own at home, but pioneering work by application-oriented research organization Fraunhofer has claimed to have cracked it by adding some good old ‘two-photon polymerization’ into the mix — yeah, obvious once you know. The added photon special sauce is what makes the printed synthetic tubes biofunctionalized, which in turn enables living body cells to dock onto them — we’re guessing that’s important. Sounds cute, but how long until we can start printing whole people — Weird Science, anyone?

Continue reading Print your own blood vessels, no need for red toner

Print your own blood vessels, no need for red toner originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Sep 2011 13:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Forget learning how to open a champagne bottle with a saber, because this smartphone brain scanner probably has it beat for coolest party trick ever. After you pull out that 14-channel EEG headset you have lying around, all you need to do is attach the probes to your date’s dome piece to measure his or her neural activity on your Nokia N900. The app then goes to work, taking binary data and reconstructing it on screen in 3D. The result? A new way to elimi-date Match.com candidates based on the real-time image of his or her melon. We can’t promise it’ll get you a second date, but we can give you a glimpse of the app in action after the break.

[Thanks, arek]

Continue reading Brain scanner app lets you show off your smarts on-the-go

Brain scanner app lets you show off your smarts on-the-go originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Sep 2011 07:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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