UCLA / Caltech researchers help patients move mouse cursors with their brains

It’s certainly not a revolutionary new concept — whiz kids have been tinkering with brain-controlled interfaces for years on end — but a collaboration between UCLA scientists and colleagues from the California Institute of Technology has taken the idea one leap closer to commercialization. Itzhak Fried, a professor of neurosurgery at UCLA, kept a close watch (via embedded electrodes) on how a dozen humans reacted to certain images, and eventually, Fried and co. were able to show that Earthlings can “regulate the activity of their neurons to intentionally alter the outcome of stimulation.” In other words, they were able to move a mouse cursor with just their mind, and brighten a test image with a 70 percent success rate. By honing the process of controlling what actions occur when focused on a given subject (or input peripheral), it opens up the possibility for paralyzed individuals to not only check their email, but also control prosthetic limbs. It’s hard to say when this stuff will be put to good use outside of a hospital, but the video after the break definitely makes us long for “sooner” rather than “later.”

Continue reading UCLA / Caltech researchers help patients move mouse cursors with their brains

UCLA / Caltech researchers help patients move mouse cursors with their brains originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Nov 2010 04:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Gizmag  |  sourceNature, UCLA, Caltech  | Email this | Comments

Shocker! Kids spending too much time in front of TV screens, too little in loving parents’ embrace

Not that anyone really needed to have this spelled out, but America’s tots are apparently spending too much time in front of the telly tubes. The latest study, conducted by the Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the University of Washington, finds that children under the age of five are spending 4.1 hours of each day watching movies or TV, doubling the recommended maximum of two hours a day. Whether you take the slightly arbitrary two-hour RDA to heart or not, it’s undeniable that all of us — not just the young ‘uns — are spending increasingly larger chunks of our time looking at the world through a screen and not through our own retinas. And, if you want an extra topping of alarmist extrapolation, these figures come from a research sample concluded in 2006, today’s better-equipped toddlers are very likely to outdo those numbers when mobile devices and the like are factored in. Imagine how bad this would all be if the US didn’t have so much quality programming to entertain and educate them with.

Shocker! Kids spending too much time in front of TV screens, too little in loving parents’ embrace originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Nov 2010 01:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink CNET, ScienceDaily  |  sourceScienceDirect  | Email this | Comments

NC State gurus find ‘Goldilocks’ of DNA self-assembly, look to improve drug-delivery vehicles

We’re guessing that most Wolfpackers in the greater Raleigh area are in full-on tailgate mode right now, but aside from laying a beating on the Seminoles this evening, NC State faithful are also trumpeting a new DNA discovery that could one day make it easy to get vital drugs to hard-to-reach places within you. Researchers from the university have purportedly discovered the ‘Goldilocks’ of DNA self-assembly, which holds promise for technologies ranging from drug delivery to molecular sensors. The concept, known as DNA-assisted self-assembly, has been vastly improved by using “computer simulations of DNA strands to identify the optimal length of a DNA strand for self-assembly.” You see, perfection occurs when strands aren’t long enough to intertwine with each other, yet not short enough to simply fold over on each other. We know, it’s a lot to wrap your brain around with half a hot dog shoved in your mouth, but hit the video after the break for a… shall we say, more visual explanation.

Continue reading NC State gurus find ‘Goldilocks’ of DNA self-assembly, look to improve drug-delivery vehicles

NC State gurus find ‘Goldilocks’ of DNA self-assembly, look to improve drug-delivery vehicles originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Oct 2010 15:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google to beta test 1Gbps fiber internet service at Stanford’s Residential Subdivision

Right after having a giant Christmas tree as your mascot comes the next best reason to be a Cardinal: the chance to have 1Gbps internet from Google. If you’ll recall, the Big G announced earlier this year that it was planning to rollout a 1Gbps fiber connection to between 50,000 and 500,000 homes in a given community, and while the search is still ongoing for the perfect fit (that’s expected to be announced by the year’s end), Google’s using a sliver of Stanford’s campus to trial things before heading public. The university’s Residential Subdivision — a group of approximately 850 faculty- and staff-owned homes on campus — will be the testing grounds for the aforesaid internet service, and the current plan is to break ground on the initiative in early 2011. El Goog chose Stanford for a couple of reasons: first, it’s bright enough to realize how awesome of a PR move this is, and second, this chunk of campus is spitting distance from Mountain View. Third, the Cardinal mascot was down with it — and seriously, who is Google to question that thing?

Google to beta test 1Gbps fiber internet service at Stanford’s Residential Subdivision originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Oct 2010 10:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Slashdot  |  sourceGoogle  | Email this | Comments

Flexible, implantable LEDs look set to start a new body modification craze

LED lights are cool, you’re cool, why not combine the two, right? We doubt that’s quite the reasoning that led to this international research project, but it’s certainly an appealing way to look at it. Our old buddy John Rogers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has headed up a research team with participants from the US, China, Korea, and Singapore, who have together produced and demonstrated a new flexible and implantable LED array. Bettering previous efforts at inserting lights under the human skin, this approach allows for stretching and twisting by as much as 75 percent, while the whole substrate is encased in thin silicon rubber making it waterproof. Basically, it’s a green light to subdermal illumination, which could aid such things as monitoring the healing of wounds, activating light-sensitive drug delivery, spectroscopy, and even robotics. By which we’re guessing they mean our robot overlords will be able to color-code us more easily. Yeah, that must be it.

Flexible, implantable LEDs look set to start a new body modification craze originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 10:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourcePhysOrg  | Email this | Comments

Robots learning our pain threshold by punching humans and seeing if they cry

The first rule of robotics is you do not talk about robotics that a robot should not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. But how does a robot know when its acts or omissions are causing nearby fleshies discomfort? The obvious way is to scan for the same signals of distress that we humans do — facial, physical, and aural — but another, more fun, way is to just hit people over and over again and ask them how much each blow hurt. That’s what professor Borut Povse over in Slovenia is doing, in a research project he describes as “impact emulation,” where six test subjects are punched by a robotic arm until they can’t take it anymore. It’s funny, yes, but it’s also novel and a somewhat ingenious way to collect data and produce more intelligent machines. Of course, whether we actually want more intelligent machines is another matter altogether.

[Thanks, Anthony]

Robots learning our pain threshold by punching humans and seeing if they cry originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Oct 2010 06:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink News.com.au  |  sourceNew Scientist  | Email this | Comments

Elpida and Sharp team up for ReRAM in 2013: 10,000x the speed of current NAND flash chips

Want to know where the next breakthrough in mobile technology will come from? Well, if Elpida and Sharp have their way, the answer will be the usual suspect of Japan, where they’re working away on new memory chips said to be capable of four orders of magnitude faster performance than the ordinary NAND flash storage of today. Dubbed ReRAM, or Resistive Random Access Memory, this project targets a 2013 date for commercialization and counts the University of Tokyo and Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology among its development team. Details on how such blinding speeds will be reached aren’t readily available, but the Nikkei reports power consumption will be down to “virtually zero” when the memory’s not in use. So with ReRAM and HP’s memristors both set for three years from now, can we schedule NAND’s funeral for 2014 or what?

Elpida and Sharp team up for ReRAM in 2013: 10,000x the speed of current NAND flash chips originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Oct 2010 04:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink MRAM-info  |  sourceReuters  | Email this | Comments

Rat controls vehicle with its brain, Pinky and The Brain apply for ‘one last run’

So, let’s paint the picture, shall we? There’s a rat, a bundle of electrodes, more wiring than an electrician would know what to do with and some sort of wheeled apparatus. In the background stands a team of crazed Japanese scientists, intent on never sleeping again until said rat controls said vehicle entirely with his mind. Nah, it’s not a re-run of a WB classic — it’s real life, and it’s happening now in a dark, shadowy corner at the University of Tokyo. The RatCar is a newly developed rat-vehicle experiment that researchers hope will open new doors for those with mobility issues; we’ve seen brain-machine interfaces change the lives of the disabled before, but giving them the ability to control their wheelchair with their mind (for instance) would be taking things to an entirely new level. As of now, the team still has to figure out how to accurately determine how much movement is coming from the rat’s feet and how much is coming from its mind, but there’s no question that the research shows promise — just don’t let the humanoids learn of our findings, okay folks?

Rat controls vehicle with its brain, Pinky and The Brain apply for ‘one last run’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Oct 2010 21:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Switched, Popular Science  |  sourceIEEE Spectrum  | Email this | Comments

NC State patents multifunctional smart sensors, looks to ‘revolutionize energy and communications infrastructure’

Bold words coming from a program that choked in epic fashion this past Saturday in front of 58,000+, don’t you think? Thankfully for those who are actually involved in the global energy and communications infrastructure (not to mention depressed alumni), NC State‘s athletics department is far removed from its research labs, and the university’s latest development was born and bred in the latter. A team of researchers have managed to patent a new technology that is expected to enable the development of “high-power, high-voltage and high-current devices that are critical for the development of energy distribution devices, such as smart grid technology and high-frequency military communications.” The secret? Integrating gallium nitride (GaN) sensors and devices directly into silicon-based computer chips, a feat that hasn’t been accomplished by any team prior. According to Dr. Jay Narayan, this newfangled integration has “enabled the creation of multifunctional smart sensors, high-electron mobility transistors, high-power devices, and high-voltage switches for smart grids,” and it also makes a broader range of radio frequencies available — something that’ll obviously be beneficial in the advancement of communications. Best of all, a US-based corporation is already in the process of licensing the technology, so it’s likely that we’ll see this in use in the not-too-distant future. An ACC championship, however, remains far more elusive.

NC State patents multifunctional smart sensors, looks to ‘revolutionize energy and communications infrastructure’ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Oct 2010 12:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Physorg  |  sourceNC State University  | Email this | Comments

Neurosurgeons use MRI-guided lasers to ‘cook’ brain tumors

In the seemingly perpetual battle to rid this planet of cancer, a team of neurosurgeons from Washington University are using a new MRI-guided high-intensity laser probe to “cook” brain tumors that would otherwise be completely inoperable. According to Dr. Eric C. Leuthardt, this procedure “offers hope to certain patients who had few or no options before,” with the laser baking the cancer cells deep within the brain while leaving the good tissue around it unmarred. The best part, however, is that this is already moving beyond the laboratory, with a pair of doctors at Barnes-Jewish Hospital using it successfully on a patient last month. Regrettably, just three hospitals at the moment are equipped with the Monteris AutoLITT device, but if we know anything about anything related to lasers, it’ll be everywhere in no time flat.

Neurosurgeons use MRI-guided lasers to ‘cook’ brain tumors originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 Oct 2010 23:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourcePhysorg  | Email this | Comments