Bionic arm: soldier can control prosthesis with his thoughts:
Cpl Andrew Garthwaite had nervous system rewired after losing right arm in Afghanistan
A SOLDIER who lost his right arm in Afghanistan is believed to be the first person in the UK to be fitted with a bionic arm he can control with his thoughts. Cpl Andrew Garthwaite, 26, from South Tyneside, was badly injured in Helmand in September 2010 when a Taliban rocket-propelled grenade took off his right arm and killed one of his comrades. He has since undergone surgery in Austria, which involved the rewiring of his nervous system, and has spent months learning how to use the new limb. During the procedure, called 'Targeted Muscle Reinnervation', surgeons at the Medical University of Vienna took nerve endings from his shoulder, which would have run down to his hand, and rewired these into his chest muscles. This left Garthwaite with the sensation of a hand growing inside his chest. He has had to learn to use his hand again, with electrodes sending signals into the bionic arm so that he can control the prosthesis, which was developed by bionics company Otto Bock in Vienna. Garthwaite told the BBC he had been "lost for words" when he learnt that he was the first person from the UK to undergo this cutting-edge bionics technique and said he was "honoured" to have been chosen. He said it was a "total weird feeling" to suddenly be able to feel with his new fingers and thumb, and that he was looking forward to making a success of his new life with a bionic arm. Garthwaite added that it looks "very natural" and people generally do not notice that it is a prosthesis, but are often surprised as it makes robotic sounds when it moves. But he has to be careful. If he thinks of moving his little finger too quickly, his whole hand rotates a full 360 degrees - a move he describes as his "party trick". · Source: Article. Total Artificial Heart patient is mobile and feeling well: New Orleans, La. - A 41-year-old man is
  generation stealth fighter aircraft, which entered the United States Air Force as the F-22A. Manufacturer: Lockheed Martin Aeronautics and Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, Engine Specifications: Two Pratt & Whitney F-119-PW-100 Turbofan engines with afterburners and two-dimensional thrust-vectoring nozzles. Each Engine is in the 35,000-lb-thrust class. Maximum Speed: Mach 2.42 at high altitude, Cruise Speed: Mach 1.72. F/A-22 Raptor: In twenty first century the art of war is well evolved than previous centuries , the Air force has become the backbone of any country’s defense line and is integral part of any countries security .It’s been said that if you have air dominance no one can dare to strike at you and gives you an overall strategic advantage .In previous two decades there has been significant and groundbreaking advancements in flying sciences as well as in fighter jets , now jets have more advance radars , communication , electronic warfare (EW) , better thrust , BVR (beyond visual range) missiles and much more . This evolution in fighter jets is an ongoing process and scientists are now a days working on jets that are soundless and not just stealthy but invisible. We have compiled a list of top ten fighter jets serving the armies around the globe, the list is based on evaluation of the fighter jets, its performance in actual warfare and on advancement of the fighter jets. Source: Indian-Military-quotes, World-Armies. Dubai super buildings from Burj Khalifa: Dubai: In the Burj Khalifa you have a stunning view of the area. Other building have the 
format of legostone and look like playing models. Burj Khalifa was opened on 4 January 2010. The tower is designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, which also designed the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) in Chicago and the new One World Trade Center in New York City among numerous other famous high-rises. The building resembles the bundled tube form of the Willis Tower, but is not a bundle tube structure. Its design is reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright's vision for The Illinois, a mile high skyscraper designed for Chicago. According to Marshall Strabala, an SOM architect who worked on the building's design team, Burj Khalifa was designed based on the 73 floor Tower Palace Three, an all residential building in Seoul. Burj Khalifa (Arabic: برج خليفة ), known as Burj Dubai prior to its inauguration, is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and is currently the tallest structure in the world, at 829.84 m (2,723 ft). Construction began on 21 September 2004, with the exterior of the structure completed on 1 October 2009. The building officially opened on 4 January 2010, and is part of the new 2 km2 (490-acre) flagship development
Group, a Chinese construction company which specialises in sustainable architecture. The 30-story hotel built in 15 days is sturdy enough to stand up to a magnitude-9.0 earthquake. The hotel is also reportedly energy-efficient and more solid all the way around than one might surmise. But the most interesting fact of all remains: It is a 30-story building that was built in 15 days. The builders took just 46 hours to finish the main structural components and another 90 hours to finish the building enclosure. All of the structure is soundproofed and with 6-inch thick glass curtain wall insulation and four-paned windows with built-in shades. There is also a heat recovery system and three-stage filtration air conditioning process that purifies indoor air to be 20 times purer than the air outside. The building even has air quality monitoring in every room which, given the pollution problem in China, seems to be an important selling point there. Features of hotel and building: • Level 9 earthquake resistance, scale model will be tested by national authorized institution. • BROAD unique technologies “diagonal bracing, light weight, factory-made” ensure the highest earthquake resistance level with minimum materials. • Trapezoidal construction structure corresponds the law of mechanics, which can withstand earthquake and storm. • Sky gardens locate on floor 71, 121, 156, 176 and 191(12,000m2 in total), also function as the helipads, which are able to evacuate tens of thousand people during fire emergency, provide extra fire protection than conventional skyscrapers. • 150mm exterior insulated walls, triple-paned windows, exterior solar shading, interior window insulation and heat recovery fresh air, 80% more energy efficient than conventional buildings. • Adopting “distributed energy system”, turbines provide power independently, exhaust from turbines is the source for cooling, heating and sanitary hot water. 50% more energy efficient than the power grid. • Indoor HVAC is controlled by occupancy sensor, fan speed will be automatically adjusted to the lowest load when people left. • Elevator generates electricity when ascending unload and descending full load, also choose the floor outside the elevator, and other electricity saving methods can save 75% more electricity than conventional elevator. • LED lamp, 90% more energy efficient than incandescent lamp and 50% moreenergy efficient than fluorescent lamp. • Separated drainage system, rain water is used for plant irrigation, bathing water will be directly drained after settled, bathroom sewage and kitchen waste go to biogas tank, biogas is used as fuel for air conditioning, and solid wastes become organic fertilizers. • Annual energy conservation 60,000 ton oil equivalent • Saving 600,000 ton construction materials • Saving 1.4 sq. kilometers land (volume ratio 50) • On-site construction waste is less than 1% of the total weight • Zero raise dust on-site • Zero water consumption on-site • Recycle processes of living garbage from the building • All steel structure, reuse after abandoned. Source: Ananta-Tec, Mind Reading Computer Could Communicate With Coma Patients: Western researchers havecalled Downtown Dubai at the 'First Interchange' along Sheikh Zayed Road, near Dubai's main business district. The tower's architecture and engineering were performed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill of Chicago, with Adrian Smith as chief architect, and Bill Baker as chief structural engineer. The primary contractor was Samsung C&T of South Korea. The total cost for the project was about US$1.5 billion; and for the entire "Downtown Dubai" development, US$20 billion.[13] In March 2009, Mohamed Ali Alabbar, chairman of the project's developer, Emaar Properties, said office space pricing at Burj Khalifa reached US$4,000 per sq ft (over US$43,000 per m²) and the Armani Residences, also in Burj Khalifa, sold for US$3,500 per sq ft (over US$37,500 per m²).[14] The project's completion coincided with the global financial crisis of 2007--2010, and with vast overbuilding in the country, led to high vacancies and foreclosures. With Dubai mired in debt from its huge ambitions, the government was forced to seek multibillion dollar bailouts from its oil rich neighbor Abu Dhabi. Subsequently, in a surprise move at its opening ceremony, the tower was renamed Burj Khalifa, said to honour the UAE President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan for his crucial support.[16] Due to the slumping demand in Dubai's property market, the rents in the Burj Khalifa plummeted 40% some ten months after its opening. Out of 900 apartments in the tower, around 825 were still empty at that time. Source: Wikipedia. Image. 30-storey hotel built in just fifteen days: The Ark Hotel was built on Dongting lake, in the Hunan Province in just 15 days by Broad 
used neuroimaging to read human thought via brain activity when they are conveying specific ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. Their findings were published in The Journal of Neuroscience in a study titled, The Brain's Silent Messenger: Using Selective Attention to Decode Human Thought for Brain-Based Communication. According to lead researcher Lorina Naci, the interpretation of human thought from brain activity – without depending on speech or action – is one of the most provoking and challenging frontiers of modern neuroscience. Specifically, patients who are fully conscious and awake, yet, due to brain damage, are unable to show any behavioral responsivity, expose the limits of the neuromuscular system and the necessity for alternate forms of communication. Participants were asked to concentrate on a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response to questions like “Are you married?” or “Do you have brothers and sisters?” and only think their response, not speak it. “This novel method allowed healthy individuals to answers questions asked in the scanner, simply by paying attention to the word they wanted to convey. By looking at their brain activity we were able to correctly decode the correct answers for each individual,” said Naci, a postdoctoral fellow at Western's Brain and Mind Institute. “The majority of volunteers conveyed their answers within three minutes of scanning, a time window that is well-suited for communication with brain-computer interfaces.” Naci and her Western colleagues Rhodri Cusack, Vivian Z. Jia and Adrian Owen are now utilizing this method to communicate with behaviorally non-responsive patients, who may be misdiagnosed as being in a vegetative state. “The strengths of this technique, especially its ease of use, robustness, and rapid detection, may maximize the chances that any such patient will be able to achieve brain-based communication,” Naci said. Contacts and sources: University of Western Ontario, Source: Article, flickr.com. DARPA Unveils Atlas, the World's Most Advanced
Humanoid Robot: DARPA has just unveiled Atlas, which is touted as the world's most advanced humanoid robot. It features an integrated real-time control computer, a hydraulic pump w/thermal management, 28 hydraulically actuated joints, Carnegie Robotics sensor head with LIDAR and stereo vision, and hands built by iRobot, along with Sandia National Labs. Continue reading for a video and more information. Not only does it keep its balance and remain standing after being hit by a 20-pound wrecking ball, ATLAS also tackles a treadmill with ease, and staying on two feet while two-by-fours other obstacles are tossed in its path. Source: techeblog.com, Bionic eye good to go: artificial retina receives FDA
approval: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted market approval to an artificial retina technology today, the first bionic eye to be approved for patients in the United States. The prosthetic technology was developed in part with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The device, called the Argus® II Retinal Prosthesis System, transmits images from a small, eye-glass-mounted camera wirelessly to a microelectrode array implanted on a patient's damaged retina. The array sends electrical signals via the optic nerve, and the brain interprets a visual image. While the Argus II is a major breakthrough in retinal prosthetics, researchers are continuing their research. This third-generation retina chip, itself still very early in the development stage, contains 1,000 electrodes and was developed by Wentai Liu, a professor of bioengineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and his colleagues. Early engineering done by Liu and his team was licensed to Second Sight for the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System. The FDA approval currently applies to individuals who have lost sight as a result of severe to profound retinitis pigmentosa (RP), an ailment that affects one in every 4,000 Americans. The implant allows some individuals with RP, who are completely blind, to locate objects, detect movement, improve orientation and mobility skills and discern shapes such as large letters.The Argus II is manufactured by, and will be distributed by, Second Sight Medical Products of Sylmar, Calif., which is part of the team of scientists and engineers from the university, federal and private restore sight to some blind patients," Humayun adds. The effort by Humayun and his colleagues has received early and continuing support from NSF, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy, with grants totaling more than $100 million. The private sector's support nearly matched that of the federal government. "The retinal implant exemplifies how NSF grants for high-risk, fundamental research can directly result in ground-breaking technologies decades later," said Acting NSF Assistant Director for Engineering Kesh Narayanan. "In collaboration with the Second Sight team and the courageous patients who volunteered to have experimental surgery to implant the first-generation devices,
Credit: Wentai Liu, UCLA
the researchers of NSF's Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems Engineering Research Center are developing technologies that may ultimately have as profound an impact on blindness as the cochlear implant has had for hearing loss." Although some treatments to slow the progression of degenerative diseases of the retina are available, no treatment has existed that could replace the function of lost photoreceptors in the eye. The researchers began their retinal prosthesis research in the late 1980s to address that need, and in 1994 Humayun received his first NSF grant, an NSF Young Investigator Award, which built upon additional support from the Whittaker Foundation. Humayun used the funding to develop the first conceptualization of the Argus II's underlying artificial retina technology. Since that time, he and his collaborators--including Wentai Liu of the University of California, Los Angeles and fellow USC researchers Jim Weiland and Eugene de Juan, Jr.--received six additional NSF grants, totaling $40 million, some of which was part of NSF's funding for BMES, launched in 2003. BMES drives research into a range of sophisticated prosthetic technologies to treat blindness, paralysis and other conditions. "We were encouraged by the team's exploratory work in the 1980s and 1990s, supported by NSF and others, which revealed that healthy neural pathways can carry information to the brain, even though other parts of the eye are damaged," adds Narayanan. "The retinal prosthesis they developed from that work simulates the most complex part of the eye. Based on the promise of that implant, we decided in 2003 to entrust the research team with an NSF Engineering Research Center," says Narayanan. "The center was to scale up technology development and increase device sensitivity and biocompatibility, while simultaneously preparing students for the workforce and building partnerships to speed the technology to the marketplace, where it could make a difference in people's lives. The center has succeeded with all of those goals." The researchers' efforts have bridged cellular biology--necessary for understanding how to stimulate the retinal ganglion cells without permanent damage--with microelectronics, which led to the miniaturized, low-power integrated chip for performing signal conversion, conditioning and stimulation functions. The hardware was paired with software processing and tuning algorithms that convert visual imagery to stimulation signals, and the entire system had to be incorporated within hermetically sealed packaging that allowed the electronics to operate in the vitreous fluid of the eye indefinitely. Finally, the research team had to develop new surgical techniques in order to integrate the device with the body, ensuring accurate placement of the stimulation electrodes on the retina. "The artificial retina is a great engineering challenge under the interdisciplinary constraint of biology, enabling technology, regulatory compliance, as well as sophisticated design science," adds Liu. "The artificial retina provides an interface between biotic and abiotic systems. Its unique design characteristics rely on system-level optimization, rather than the more common practice of component optimization, to achieve miniaturization and integration. Using the most advanced semiconductor technology, the engine for the artificial retina is a 'system on a chip' of mixed voltages and mixed analog-digital design, which provides self-contained power and data management and other functionality. This design for the artificial retina facilitates both surgical procedures and regulatory compliance." The Argus II design consists of an external video camera system matched to the implanted retinal stimulator, which contains a microelectrode array that spans 20 degrees of visual field. The NSF BMES ERC has developed a prototype system with an array of more than 15 times as many electrodes and an ultra-miniature video camera that can be implanted in the eye. However, this prototype is many years away from being available for patient use. "The external camera system-built into a pair of glasses-streams video to a belt-worn computer, which converts the video into stimulus commands for the implant," says Weiland. "The belt-worn computer encodes the commands into a wireless signal that is transmitted to the implant, which has the necessary electronics to receive and decode both wireless power and data. Based on those data, the implant stimulates the retina with small electrical pulses. The electronics are hermetically packaged and the electrical stimulus is delivered to the retina via a microelectrode array." In 1998, Robert Greenberg founded Second Sight to develop the technology for the marketplace. While under development, the Argus I and Argus II systems have won wide recognition, including a 2010 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award and a 2009 R&D 100 Award, but it is only with FDA approval that the technology can now be made available to patients. "An artificial retina can offer hope to those with retinitis pigmentosa, as it may help them achieve a level of visual perception that enhances their quality of life, enabling them to perform functions of daily living more easily and the chance to enjoy simple pleasures we may take for granted," says Narayanan. "Such success is the result of fundamental studies in several fields, technology improvements based on those results and feedback from clinical trials--all enabled by sustained public and private investment from entities like NSF." Contacts and sources: National Science Foundation, Source: Nano Patents And Innovation, Screen Shot On Youtube Video, US Titan Supercomputer Clocked as World's Fastest TENNESSEE, USA – The top two spots on the list
Nigel Ackland, 53, a father who lost an arm in a work accident, had this bionic 'Terminator arm' fitted. He uses the new limb by sending signals from his brain and controling it with his upper arm.
of the world's most powerful supercomputers have both been captured by the US. The last time the country was in a similar position was three years ago. The fastest machine - Titan, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee - is an upgrade of Jaguar, the system which held the top spot in 2009. The supercomputer will be used to help develop more energy-efficient engines for vehicles, model climate change and research biofuels. It can also be rented to third-parties, and is operated as part of the US Department of Energy's network of research labs. The Top 500 list of supercomputers was published by Hans Muer, professor of computer science at Mannheim, who has been keeping track of developments since 1986. It was released at the SC12 supercomputing conference in Salt Lake City, Utah.Mixed processors Titan leapfrogged the previous champion IBM's Sequoia - which is used to carry out simulations to help extend the life of nuclear weapons - thanks to its mix of central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) technologies. According to the Linpack benchmark it operates at 17.59 petaflop/sec - the equivalent of 17,590 trillion calculations per second. The benchmark measures real-world performance - but in theory the machine can boost that to a "peak performance" of more than 20 petaflop/sec. To achieve this the device has been fitted with 18,688 Tesla K20x GPU modules made by Nvidia to work alongside its pre-existing CPUs. Traditionally supercomputers relied only on CPUs. CPU cores are designed to carry out a single set of instructions at a time, making them well suited for tasks in which the answer to one calculation is used to work out the next. GPU cores are typically slower at carrying out individual calculations, but make up for this by being able to carry out many at the same time. This makes them best suited for "parallellisable jobs" - processes that can be broken down into several parts that are then run simultaneously. Mixing CPUs and GPUs together allows the most appropriate core to carry out each process. Nvidia said that in most instances its GPUs now carried out about 90% of Titan's workload. "Basing Titan on Tesla GPUs allows Oak Ridge to run phenomenally complex applications at scale, and validates the use of 'accelerated computing' to address our most pressing scientific problems," said Steve Scott, chief technology officer of the GPU accelerated computing business at Nvidia. The other top systems included: (1) Fujitsu's K computer at the Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan, which was in third spot. (2) IBM's BlueGene/Q Mira computer at Argonne National Library, near Chicago in the US, which came fourth. (3) Another IBM BlueGene/Q system, called Juqueen, at the Forschungszentrum Juelich in Germany - Europe's fastest - which came fifth. Out of the top 500 computers, 62 used a mix of CPU and GPU processors. Six months ago the figure was 58. Source: koteaittimes,com, Giant Medical Leap! Mind Controlled Robot Arm Functions As Fast As
A Real Arm For Quadriplegic Woman: All she wanted was chocolate. Just the simple act of dropping some into her own mouth and savoring both the sweetness of the goodie and of an act of independence she hasn't enjoyed for 10 years. Jan Scheuermann, 53, came home to Pittsburgh a decade ago because she thought her degenerative condition might soon lead to her death, with two young children and a husband finding more insulation around her extended family in the South Hills. Upon seeing the success of study participant Tim Hemmes in the previous round of the Brain Computer Interface project, Ms. Scheuermann contacted the researchers and became part of a scientific breakthrough. And she also got to have her chocolate. Reaching out to “high five” someone, grasping and moving objects of different shapes and sizes, feeding herself dark chocolate. For Jan Scheuermann and a team of researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC, accomplishing these seemingly ordinary tasks demonstrated for the first time that a person with longstanding quadriplegia can maneuver a mind-controlled, human-like robot arm in seven dimensions (7D) to consistently perform many of the natural and complex motions of everyday life. In a study published in the online version of The Lancet, the researchers described the brain-computer interface (BCI) technology and training programs that allowed Ms. Scheuermann, 53, of Whitehall Borough in Pittsburgh, Pa. to intentionally move an arm, turn and bend a wrist, and close a hand for the first time in nine years. Jan Scheuermann, who has quadriplegia, brings a chocolate bar to her mouth using a robot arm she is guiding with her thoughts. Researcher Elke Brown, M.D., watches in the background. Less than a year after she told the research team, “I’m going to feed myself chocolate before this is over,” Ms. Scheuermann savored its taste and announced as they applauded her feat, “One small nibble for a woman, one giant bite for BCI.” “This is a spectacular leap toward greater function and independence for people who are unable to move their own arms,” agreed senior investigator Andrew B. Schwartz, Ph.D., professor, Department of Neurobiology, Pitt School of Medicine. “This technology, which interprets brain signals to guide a robot arm, has enormous potential that we are continuing to explore. Our study has shown us that it is technically feasible to restore ability; the participants have told us that BCI gives them hope for the future.” In 1996, Ms. Scheuermann was a 36-year-old mother of two young children, running a successful business planning parties with murder-mystery themes and living in California when one day she noticed her legs seemed to drag behind her. Within two years, her legs and arms progressively weakened to the point that she required a wheelchair, as well as an attendant to assist her with dressing,
 eating, bathing and other day-to-day activities. After returning home to Pittsburgh in 1998 for support from her extended family, she was diagnosed with spinocerebellar degeneration, in which the connections between the brain and muscles slowly, and inexplicably, deteriorate. “Now I can’t move my arms and legs at all. I can’t even shrug my shoulders,” she said. “But I have come to the conclusion that worrying about something is experiencing it twice. I try to dwell on the good things that I have.” A friend pointed out an October 2011 video about another Pitt/UPMC BCI research study in which Tim Hemmes, a Butler, Pa., man who sustained a spinal cord injury that left him with quadriplegia, moved objects on a computer screen and ultimately reached out with a robot arm to touch his girlfriend. “Wow, it’s so neat that he can do that,” Ms. Scheuermann thought as she watched him. “I wish I could do something like that.” She had her attendant call the trial coordinator immediately, and said, “I’m a quadriplegic. Hook me up, sign me up! I want to do that!” On Feb. 10, 2012, after screening tests to confirm that she was eligible for the study, co-investigator and UPMC neurosurgeon Elizabeth Tyler-Kabara, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Neurological Surgery, Pitt School of Medicine, placed two quarter-inch square electrode grids with 96 tiny contact points each in the regions of Ms. Scheuermann’s brain that would normally control right arm and hand movement. “Prior to surgery, we conducted functional imaging tests of the brain to determine exactly where to put the two grids,” she said. “Then we used imaging technology in the operating room to guide placement of the grids, which have points that penetrate the brain’s surface by about one-sixteenth of an inch.” The electrode points pick up signals from individual neurons and computer algorithms are used to identify the firing patterns associated with particular observed or imagined movements, such as raising or lowering the arm, or turning the wrist, explained lead investigator Jennifer Collinger, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R), and research scientist for the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System. That intent to move is then translated into actual movement of the robot arm, which was developed by Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab. Two days after the operation, the team hooked up the two terminals that protrude from Ms. Scheuermann’s skull to the computer. “We could actually see the neurons fire on the computer screen when she thought about closing her hand,” Dr. Collinger said. “When she stopped, they stopped firing. So we thought, ‘This is really going to work.’” Within a week, Ms. Scheuermann could reach in and out, left and right, and up and down with the arm, which she named Hector, giving her 3-dimensional control that had her high-fiving with the researchers. “What we did in the first week they thought we’d be stuck on for a month,” she noted. Before three months had passed, she also could flex the wrist back and forth, move it from side to side and rotate it clockwise and counter-clockwise, as well as grip objects, adding up to what scientists call 7D control. In a study task called the Action Research Arm Test, Ms. Scheuermann guided the arm from a position four inches above a table to pick up blocks and tubes of different sizes, a ball and a stone and put them down on a nearby tray. She also picked up cones from one base to restack them on another a foot away, another task requiring grasping, transporting and positioning of objects with precision. “Our findings indicate that by a variety of measures, she was able to improve her performance consistently over many days,” Dr. Schwartz explained. “The training methods and algorithms that we used in monkey models of this technology also worked for Jan, suggesting that it’s possible for people with long-term paralysis to recover natural, intuitive command signals to orient a prosthetic hand and arm to allow meaningful interaction with the environment.” In a separate study, researchers also continue to study BCI technology that uses an electrocortigraphy (ECoG) grid, which sits on the surface of the brain rather than slightly penetrates the tissue as in the case of the grids used for Ms. Scheuermann. In both studies, “we’re recording electrical activity in the brain, and the goal is to try to decode what that activity means and then use that code to control an arm,” said senior investigator Michael Boninger, M.D., professor and chair, PM&R, and director of UPMC Rehabilitation Institute. “We are learning so much about how the brain controls motor activity, thanks to the hard work and dedication of our trial participants. Perhaps in five to 10 years, we will have a device that can be used in the day-to-day lives of people who are not able to use their own arms.” The next step for BCI technology will likely use a two-way electrode system that can not only capture the intention to move, but in addition, will stimulate the brain to generate sensation, potentially allowing a user to adjust grip strength to firmly grasp a doorknob or gently cradle an egg. After that, “we’re hoping this can become a fully implanted, wireless system that people can actually use in their homes without our supervision,” Dr. Collinger said. “It might even be possible to combine brain control with a device that directly stimulates muscles to restore movement of the individual’s own limb.” For now, Ms. Scheuermann is expected to continue to put the BCI technology through its paces for two more months, and then the implants will be removed in another operation. “This is the ride of my life,” she said. “This is the rollercoaster. This is skydiving. It’s just fabulous, and I’m enjoying every second of it.” In addition to Drs. Collinger, Tyler-Kabara, Boninger and Schwartz, study co-authors include Brian Wodlinger, Ph.D., John E. Downey, Wei Wang, Ph.D., and Doug Weber, Ph.D., all of PM&R; and Angus J. McMorland, Ph.D., and Meel Velliste, Ph.D., of the Department of Neurobiology, Pitt School of Medicine. The BCI projects are funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, National Institutes of Health grant 8KL2TR000146-07, the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs, the UPMC Rehabilitation Institute and the University of Pittsburgh Clinical and Translational Science Institute. Source: University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Giant Medical Leap!, Source: Nano Patents And Innovations, Terminator Arm Dad: This remarkable video composes us speculate — is here some sort of 
psychosomatic assessment before someone is given a robot-Terminator arm, or do doctors just cross their fingers and hope for the best? It seems like that could go really wrong. luckily, Nigel Ackland, 53, is using his bionic arm for cracking eggs and torrential beers, rather than throttling somebody until their heart beats no more. Ackland lost part of his arm in an accident, and now for the first time in six years he can dress himself, peel vegetables and shake hands with any person brave enough to stick their hand into a robot hand, gratitude to sensors in the arm that are attached to two muscles. Good job, science. Source: SpotInfo, Chinese doctors replace
 man's missing finger with his toe: Chinese doctors have used a 22-year-old student's toe to create a new finger after he lost his digit as a child. Ha Yuan lost his ring finger on his left hand as a child, and said his handicap stopped him from getting well-paid jobs. Surgeons at Changsha, capital of southern China's Hunan Province, amputated the second toe on his left foot and grafted it onto the affected hand. Doctors said it is not easy to tell the difference with the new appendage, and medics even believe it could be fully functioning within three months, 'Sina English' reported. "It's not easy to tell the difference if people are not looking at it closely. The only difference is the size of the nail," said Doctor Lu, who helped with the pioneering operation. Lu added that it would take three months for the new 'finger' to resume functions. "I feel my new life is about to start," said Ha. Source: Article. Now, 'Cheetah' robot that runs faster than Usain Bolt: A Pentagon-funded robot 'Cheetah' has  clocked 45.5 kilometres per hour to beat the record of the fastest sprinter, Usain Bolt. Jamaican runner Bolt's current record of 44.7 kilometres per hour is the fastest a man has ever run, 'the Telegraph' reported. The Cheetah, a quadrupedal machine built by Boston Dynamics and backed by Darpa, the US Defence Department's research division, not only topped the Olympic 100m and 200m champion's record-setting time, it also beat its previous top speed of 29 kilometres per hour, set just six months ago. However, the robot's developers qualified the achievement. "To be fair, keep in mind that the Cheetah robot runs on a treadmill without wind drag and has an off-board power supply that it does not carry. So Bolt is still the superior athlete," Boston Dynamics said. "Our real goal is to create a robot that moves freely outdoors while it runs fast. "We are building an outdoor version that we call Wildcat, that should be ready for testing early next year," Dr Alfred Rizzi, the head of Cheetah programme, said in a statement. Cheetah, according to the US Defence Department, is being developed for use on terrain where conventional wheels and tracks would struggle and will "contribute to emergency response, humanitarian assistance and other defence missions. Image Link Photobucket, "Source: Indian Express: Has God Particle finally been found? Scientists prepare to announce new 
results: The hunt for the God Particle could be close to completion as scientists prepare to reveal the latest results from the Large Hadron Collider ahead of a major conference next week. Scientists from Cern will announce on Wednesday whether the tantalising "hints" of the Higgs Boson which they presented in December have been strengthened or grown weaker over the past six months. Although the results may not be strong enough to declare an official discovery, they are rumoured to show very similar signals to those announced last year which back up the previous findings. Independent experts said a replication of the same results would leave little doubt that the "hints" were genuine, indicating that the sought after particle, or something resembling it, exists. Finding the Higgs Boson would provide the last piece of evidence for the Standard Model, the most widely accepted explanation of how the Universe works. The particle, first proposed in theory by British physicist Peter Higgs in 1964, would prove the existence of the Higgs Field, an invisible force which gives particles their mass and prevents them from whizzing through the universe at the speed of light. Source: The Coming Crisis, Believe it or not the British lab is growing human spare parts, now organ donation is a thing of the
 past: 'This is a nose we’re growing for a patient next month,’ Professor Alexander Seifalian says matter-of-factly, plucking a Petri dish from the bench beside him. Inside is an utterly lifelike appendage, swimming in red goo. Alongside it is another dish containing an ear. ‘It’s a world first,’ he says smiling. ‘Nobody has ever grown a nose before.’ His lab is little more than a series of worn wooden desktops strewn with beakers, solutions, taps, medical jars, tubing and paperwork, and looks like a school chemistry lab. But it’s from here that Seifalian leads University College London’s (UCL) Department of Nanotechnology and Regenerative Medicine, which he jokingly calls the ‘human body parts store’. Seifalian showing Nose made from nanomolecules As he takes me on a tour of his lab I’m bombarded with one medical breakthrough after another. Daily Mail Reporter Said At one desk he picks up a glass mould that shaped the trachea – windpipe – used in the world’s first synthetic organ transplant. At another are the ingredients for the revolutionary nanomaterial at the heart of his creations, and just beyond that is a large machine with a pale, gossamer-thin cable inside that’s pulsing with what looks like a heartbeat. It’s an artery. ‘We are the first in the world working on this,’ Seifalian says casually to daily mail reporter. ‘We can make a metre every 20 seconds if we need to.’ ‘Other groups have tried to tackle nose replacement with implants but we’ve found they don’t last,’ says Adelola Oseni, one of Seifalian’s team. ‘They migrate, the shape of the nose changes. But our one will hold itself completely, as it’s an entire nose shape made out of polymer.’ Looking like very
thin Latex rubber, the polymer is made up of billions of molecules, each measuring just over one nanometre (a billionth of a metre), or 40,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Working at molecular level allows the material itself to be intricately detailed. Ear made in lab ‘Inside this nanomaterial are thousands of small holes,’ says Seifalian. ‘Tissue grows into these and becomes part of it. It becomes the same as a nose and will even feel like one.’ When the nose is transferred to the patient, it doesn’t go directly onto the face but will be placed inside a balloon inserted beneath the skin on their arm. After four weeks, during which time skin and blood vessels can grow, the nose can be monitored, then it can be transplanted to the face. At the cutting edge of modern medicine, Seifalian and his team are focusing on growing replacement organs and body parts to order using a patient’s own cells. There would be no more waiting for donors or complex reconstruction – just a quick swap. And because the organ is made from the patient’s own cells, the risk of rejection should, in theory, be eliminated. Unsurprisingly, the recipe for the breakthrough biocompatible material used is a closely guarded secret. From those who have lost noses to cancer to others mutilated by injury, it’s hoped this revolutionary process could transform thousands of lives. ‘We seed the patient’s own cells on to the polymer inside a bioreactor,’ says Oseni. This is a sterile environment mirroring the human body’s temperature, blood and oxygen supply. ‘As the cells take hold and multiply, so the polymer becomes coated. The same methods could be applied to all parts of the face to reconstruct those of people who have had severe facial traumas.’ ‘The full success of these implants needs to be tested with a larger number of patients in clinical trials,’ says Seifalian. Such is the speed of progress that regenerative medicine is now moving on from replacing heart valves and rebuilding faces to potentially curing blindness and accelerating the study of some of the most debilitating diseases. The UK is at the forefront of this research, with work on a £54 million MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine in Edinburgh completed earlier this year. Until recently, regenerative medicine focused mostly on embryonic stem cells as these were the most versatile. They are called pluripotent, meaning they have the ability to become any cell type – blood, muscle, etc. By contrast, adult stem cells can replicate themselves endlessly, but only as the cell they began life as – skin cells replicate as skin cells, muscle cells as muscle cells. But the moral debate surrounding embryonic stem cell research is controversial. Stem cells are taken from human embryos, which are destroyed in the process. In 2007, Professor Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University managed to create pluripotent cells from adult stem cells, potentially removing the need for embryonic stem cells completely. These are known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs. He was in part inspired by Professor Ian Wilmut, who was knighted for his role in the creation of Dolly the cloned sheep. ‘In the same way Dolly made us think maybe we could change cells, Yamanaka proved it could be done,’ says Wilmut. ‘This makes you think you can produce any cell type, producing nerves or muscle from skin cells, for example.’ This has been proved recently with the news that scientists at CambridgeUniversity have created brain cells from skin cells which could help with the search for new treatments for Alzheimer’s, stroke and epilepsy. Sitting on a desk inside Seifalian’s laboratory is the mould for the trachea which he and his team created. It was recently implanted into a patient making it the world’s first ever synthetic organ transplant. The patient in question, a 36-year-old Eritrean man, had a large cancerous tumour in his throat that was rapidly spreading towards his lungs. The transplant was successful, and the patient is now out of hospital and recovering well. On another bench in the lab lies an ear ready for seeding, while next door the team is working on heart valves that won’t even need seeding before implantation, having been developed instead to attract the cells they need once implanted. This will allow them to grow in the body instead of bioreactors and, along with an insertion method that removes the need to open the chest, could revolutionise heart bypass surgery. ‘Normally for heart bypass you take a section of vein from the patient’s leg or arm. But 30 per cent of patients don’t have suitable veins so can’t have the operation. No alternative currently exists for them,’ says Seifalian. ‘We are the first in the world with this. Nobody else is even close. It has been successful in animal trials; this year it will be going for patient trials’. While Seifalian and his team keep developing potential implants, on the other side of London another team led by Professor Pete Coffey, the London Project to Cure Blindness, is using stem cells to tackle age-related macular degeneration, the most common form of age-related sight loss, which affects 513,000 people in the UK alone. ‘There’s nothing that can be done for those with the disease,’ says Coffey. ‘There’s a real unmet need here.’ The aim is to replace the diseased cells with healthy new ones, restoring vision. Unlike Seifalian’s team, Coffey’s is using embryonic stem cells because in every experiment to date they are the only ones that work. On the issue of working with embryonic stem cells Coffey is clear. ‘One thing I always face is that the term embryo has a different meaning for different people. 'The embryo in this case is five days old, and I know under various religious definitions that’s life, but I see this as similar to organ donation. That embryo cannot survive on its own.’ Most embryonic cells used in research, including Coffey’s, are from IVF treatment where a large surplus of embryos is part of the process. Unwanted embryos can be donated to research, otherwise, as Coffey says, ‘they’re disposed of.’ ‘A human embryonic cell keeps reproducing itself naturally, so one cell generates everything we need – we’ve banked the duplicates in nitrogen chambers in three different countries – which means this cell could service a clinical population of 28 million. Isn’t that worth it?’ Coffey’s project is perhaps the most advanced major regenerative medicine project in the world today, scheduled for clinical trials with patients later this year. But even success in a patient trial is no guarantee a treatment will ever reach the mass market. ‘The sad thing is the time frame here,’ says Paul Whiting, executive director of Pfizer’s regenerative medicine arm, who is working closely with Coffey’s project. ‘Even things that seem close are probably ten years away, while many are 20 to 50 years away. We need to know if these things will do long-term harm before they can reach patients, so it will be a gradual progression over at least 50 years.’ And a recent study illustrates just how far the divide between laboratory success and clinical reality could be: researchers at California University have found that mice treated with iPSCs made from their own skin cells ultimately reject the transplants. When asked about this, Wilmut agrees it was valid but also says it was ‘a very preliminary observation’, another piece of the puzzle leading toward full understanding of the subject. There are also concerns that the reprogramming process used to create iPSCs might cause cancer in those same cells. But back in Seifalian’s labs, the raw energy remains. ‘Before, the idea was you rob Peter to pay Paul, taking one bit of the body to reconstruct another, but now the idea of being able to grow tissues in a lab and to reconstruct the body is huge,’ says Adelola Oseni.‘If we can grow a heart, a lung or a trachea in a lab, we don’t need to wait for donors. 'This work has massive implications for the way we function as clinicians and the way medicine is practised.’ Source : Daily Mail Source: Ananta Sports. Robotic shark spotter tested: Norwegian scientists studying marine life in the Pacific
Ocean have successfully tested a robotic shark spotter. The robot resembles a lemon-coloured surfing board. It detects a shark at a distance of up to 300 metres and reports its discovery to researchers via a satellite.The device has already been used for spotting great whites. Tags: Sci-Tech, News, shark, robot, World, Читать далее, Source: Voice of Russia. Robotic prostitutes will change the sex
industry: Two Kiwi researchers have envisioned what the sex industry would be like in the year 2050, when the prostitutes would be replaced by robots. Ian Yeoman and Michelle Mars of the Victoria Management School in Wellington, New Zealand believe that this science-fiction-style vision could become reality within 40 years. They focussed on Amsterdam’s Red Light District and envisaged how the most popular brothel in the city will work.They call this imaginary brothel the Yub-Yum, and describe it as ‘modern and gleaming with about 100 scantily clad blondes and brunettes parading around in exotic G-strings and lingerie’, the Daily Mail reported. Source: Article, Swiss scientists create mind controlled robot
for disabled patients: A team of scientists at Switzerland's École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have developed a robot that can be controlled using only your mind. The new technology involve a quadriplegic man wearing cap to record his brain signals, which were then transferred to a small wheeled robot that he could move left and right simply by thinking it. While the technology has the potential to give immobile patients the ability to see areas outside of their hospital bed. There are a few issues that still need to be addressed. Major among them is the fact that the system requires complete concentration — if you get distracted in any way the signal will degrade. In order to combat this the research team is hoping to make the technology work more like a human brain. So if you give it a command to walk, for instance, the robot will keep doing so until you either tell it to stop or it hits some sort of obstacle. According to the creators, a home version could be ready in "a matter of years."Source: Article, Immortality For Humans By 2045: A Russian mogul wants to
achieve cybernetic immortality for humans within the next 33 years. He's pulled together a team intent on creating fully functional holographic human avatars that house our artificial brains. Now he's asking billionaires to help fund the advancements needed along the way. The man behind the 2045 Initiative, described as a nonprofit organization, is a Russian named Dmitry Itskov. The ambitious timeline he's laid out involves creating different avatars. First a robotic copy that's controlled remotely through a brain interface. Then one in which a human brain can be transplanted at the end of life. The next could house an artificial human brain, and finally we'd have holographic avatars containing our intelligence much like the movie "Surrogates." Gizmag's Dario Borghino wisely warned that "one must be careful not to believe that improbable technological advances automatically become more likely simply by looking further away in the future." And in the grand scheme of things, 2045 is not that far away. So just how likely is it that this project will succeed? Source: Sam Daily Times, Human brain to be built using supercomputer: London,
Scientists are trying to build human brain using the world’s most powerful computer. It is intended to combine all the information so far uncovered about its mysterious workings - and replicate them on a screen, right down to the level of individual cells and molecules. If it works it could be revolutionary for understanding devastating neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and even shedding light into how we think, and make decisions. Professor Henry Markram, based in Switzerland, is leading the project and will be working with scientists from across Europe including the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute at Cambridge. They hope to complete it within 12 years. “The complexity of the brain, with its billions of interconnected neurons, makes it hard for neuroscientists to truly understand how it works. Simulating it will make it much easier – allowing them to manipulate and measure any aspect of the brain,” he said. Housed at a facility in Dusseldorf in Germany, the ‘brain’ will feature thousands of three-dimensional images built around a semi-circular ‘cockpit’ so scientists can virtually ‘fly’ around different areas and watch how they communicate with each other. It aims to integrate all the neuroscience research being carried out all over the world – an estimated 60,000 scientific papers every year - into one platform. The project has received some funding from the EU and has been shortlisted for a 1 billion euro EU grant, which will be decided next month. When complete it could be used to test new drugs, which could dramatically shorten the time required for licencing them than human trials, and pave the way for more intelligent robots and computers. There are inevitably concerns about the consequences of this ‘manipulation’ and creating computers, which can think for themselves. In Germany the media have dubbed the researchers ‘Team Frankenstein’. But Prof Markram said: “This will, when successful, help two billion people annually who suffer from some type of brain impairment. “This is one of the three grand challenges for humanity. We need to understand earth, space and the brain. We need to understand what makes us human,” he added. Our brains have 100 billion neurons. Each one performs billions of ‘calculations’ per second – roughly similar to a desktop computer. So the brain computer will need to be able to do billion calculations that will require the output of a nuclear power station. Finding a way to power the supercomputer will be one of the researchers’ major challenges. Image Link Photobucket, Source: Indian Express, Blind man can see the world after implanting Bionic Eye Microchips: 'I've dreamed in colour for the
Chip of 3mm by 3mm that is planted to sufferers Eye
first time in 20 years': Blind British man can see again after first successful implant of 'bionic' eye microchips It was the ‘magic moment’ that released Chris James from ten years ofblindness. Doctors switched on a microchip that had been inserted into the back of his eye three weeks earlier. After a decade of darkness, there was a sudden explosion of bright light – like a flash bulb going off, he says. Now he is able to make out shapes and light. He hopes his sight – and the way his brain interprets what the microchip is showing it – will carry on improving. Mr James, 54, is one of two British men who have had their vision partly restored by a pioneering retina implant. Chip of
Chip Pairs with This External Device to Process Image
3mm by 3mm that is planted to sufferers Eye The other, Robin Millar, one of Britain’s most successful music producers, says he has dreamed in colour for the first time. Both had lost their vision because of a condition known as retinitis pigmentosa, where the photoreceptor cells at the back of the eye gradually cease to work. Their stories bring hope to the 20,000 Britons with RP – and to those with other eye conditions such as advanced macular degeneration which affects up to half a million. Mr James had a ten-hour operation to insert the wafer-thin microchip in the back of his left eye at the Oxford University Eye Hospital six weeks ago. Three weeks later, it was turned on.. Mr James, who lives in Wroughton, Wiltshire, with his wife Janet, said of his ‘magic moment’: ‘I did not know what to expect but I got a flash in the eye, it was like someone taking a photo with a flashbulb and I knew my optic nerve was still working.’ The microchip has 1,500 light sensitive pixels which take over the function of the retina’s photoreceptor rods and cones. One of the first tests was making out a white plate and cup on a black background.Mr James, who works for Swindon Council,
said to Daily mail ‘It took a while for my brain to adjust to what was in front of me, but I was able to detect the curves and outline of these objects.’ Tim Jackson, a consultant retinal surgeon at King’s College Hospital and Robert MacLaren, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Oxford and a consultant retinal surgeon at the Oxford Eye Hospital, who are running the trial, say it has ‘exceeded expectations’ with patients already regaining ‘useful vision’. Ten more Britons with RP will be fitted with the implants, which are also being tested in Germany and China. The device, made by Retina Implant AG ofGermany, connects to a wireless power supply buried behind the ear. This is connected to an external battery unit via a magnetic disc on the scalp. The user can alter the sensitivity of the device using switches on the unit. Mr
Jackson said: ‘It’s difficult to say how much benefit each patient will get, this pioneering treatment is at an early stage. ‘But it’s an exciting and important step forward. Many of those who receive this treatment have lost their vision for many years. The impact of them seeing again, even if it is not normal vision, can be profound and at times quite moving.’ Mr Millar, 60, who was behind Sade’s Diamond Life album, has been blind for 25 years. He said: ‘Since switching on the device I am able to detect light and distinguish the outlines of objects. ‘I have even dreamt in very vivid colour for the first time in 25 years so a part of my brain which had gone to sleep has woken up! I feel this is incredibly promising and I’m happy to be contributing to this legacy.’Source: Article, New Honda Asimo "Now Smarter, Faster": Honda's human - shaped robot can now run faster, balance itself on uneven surfaces, hop on one foot and pour a drink. Some of its technology may even be used to help out with clean-up operations at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. Honda's demonstration of the revamped "Asimo" on Tuesday at its Tokyo suburban research
facility was not only to prove that the bubble-headed childlike machine was more limber and a bit smarter. It was a way to try to answer some critics that Asimo, first shown in 2000, had been of little practical use so far, proving to be nothing more than a glorified toy and cute showcase for the Honda Motor Co. brand. Honda President Takanobu Ito told reporters some of Asimo's technology was used to develop a robotic arm in just six months with the intention of helping with the nuclear crisis in northeastern Japan. The mechanical arm can open and close valves at Fukushima Dai - ichi nuclear power plant, which went into meltdown after the March tsunami, according to Honda. The automaker is working with the utility behind the problem plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co., to try to meet demands to bring the plant under control. Ito acknowledged that the first idea was to send in Asimo to help out, but that was not possible because the robot cannot maneuver in rubble, and its delicate computer parts would malfunction in radiation. But in Tuesday's demonstration, Asimo was able to walk without falling over 2 centimeter (0.8 inch) padded bumps on the floor. It can also now jog faster than itdid in 2005, at 9 kilometers per hour (5.6 mph), instead of the earlier 6 kph (3.7 mph), pushing better with its toes so its run was smoother and not as jerky. Asimo was also able to distinguish the voices of three people spoken at once, using face recognition and analyzing sound, to figure out that one woman wanted hot coffee, another orange juice, and still another milk tea. The
new Asimo got improved hands as well, allowing individual movement of each finger, so it could do sign language. "My name is Asimo," it said, making the signs of its words with stubby fingers. It also opened a thermos bottle and gracefully poured juice into a paper cup. Ito said Asimo had developed autonomous artificial intelligence so that it could potentially maneuver itself through crowds of people, without remote control or stopping each time to check on its programming. But he acknowledged that making robotics into a practical business will take more time, meaning Asimo wasn't about to show up in any home soon. "Maybe at the start this was a dream of engineers to make a machine that was close to a human being, like Astro Boy," he said. "We think Asimo is good." Other manufacturers are also developing robots, eager to cash in on the expected needs of Japan's rapidly aging population. Toyota Motor Corp., Japan's top automaker which makes the Prius hybrid and Lexus luxury models, is among those to have jumped on the robotics bandwagon. In the past, it has shown robots that can play the violin and talk like receptionists. Last week, it showed a computerized device that latches on to the body to help old or sick people walk and keep balance. Honda, which makes the Odyssey minivan and Accord sedan, has developed similar brace-like gadgets to help people get about. Neither the Toyota nor Honda product is on sale yet. Still, experts say such research is important to keep up. "Maybe it can't be put to use right away, but it is definitely a technology that we should keep working on to advance," Hiroshi Kobayashi, a mechanical engineering professor at Tokyo University of Science, said of the new Asimo. "It is common for what we achieve in research to turn out later to lead to many products," said Kobayashi, who has developed experimental robots. By 2013, computers will be 1,000 times faster:
London: Get ready for the next- generation computers and smart-phones that are up to 1,000 times faster than the systems you use today. Computer maker IBM is developing "skyscraper" computers using huge sandwiches of silicon chips by sticking layer after layer of chips covered with tiny 3M currently makes heat resistant glues, adhesives used in the aerospace industry and sticky tapes, but the hi-tech glues created for IBM could actually be the key step towards making the next evolutionary leap in computing, the Daily Mail reported. The attempts at piling chips vertically -- known as 3D packaging -- has so far been suffering from overheating. But, the new glues could potentially conduct heat through a stack of densely-packed chips and away from logic circuits that could be burnt out by the heat. The research aims to create "stacks" of up to 100 layers of silicon, the report said. Mike Bowman, marketing manager for 3M, said: "This material fits underneath computer chips when they're attached to printed circuit boards -- the unique part of what we're doing is that our glue conducts heat out to the edge of the sandwich. "Our glue will spread heat more evenly through the chip. With conventional chips, with just one or two layers, but once you're stacking chips, the problem can become very severe." According to the researchers, a ball of advanced adhesive is placed between layers of chips, allowing up to 100 chips to be stacked without overheating. "Today's chips including those containing 3D transistors are in fact 2D chips that are still very flat structures," Bernie Meyerson, a vice president of IBM Research, said in a statement. So far, most increases in computing power have been driven by scientific breakthroughs that allow chip makers to etch ever-smaller circuits onto ever-smaller chip wafers. The new '3D' approach could accelerate gadgets such as tablet computers to unheard-of new speeds. "Our scientists are aiming to develop materials that will allow us to package tremendous amounts of computing power into a new form factor -- a silicon skyscraper," said Meyerson. "We believe we can advance this, and create a new class of semiconductors -- faster, with lower power usage, ideal for tablets and smartphones." Other 3M glues are used in hi-tech industries such as solar power, as well as in markedly lower-tech environments such as carpentry. Both companies did not speculate on a release date for the new technology, but insiders said such versions could be on the market as early as 2013. Source Article, “Mirage Effect” Creates First Underwater Invisibility Cloak:
Size doesn't matter with these nano-tubes. They're as strong as steel and as light as air. | Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
By: Camilo Pardo, Scientists at the University of Texas at Dallas have successfully manipulated the “mirage effect” to engineer an underwater invisibility cloak reminiscent of the cloak in the beloved Harry Potter series. Earlier this month Dr. Ray Baughman and other researchers devised an experiment to hide objects from view using nanotechnology and photo-thermal deflection. More commonly termed the “mirage effect”, the idea behind this phenomenon is simple. A drastic change in temperature over a small distance bends light rays towards your eye as opposed to
bouncing off the surface. An example of this effect: when looking down a road on a hot summer day, a puddle of water can be seen in the distance. That puddle doesn’t actually exist; it is merely an illusion created by the deflected light photons, and you are actually seeing an image of the blue sky being redirected from the ground. Researchers’ first step involved finding a material that would be able to facilitate the “mirage effect”, which they discovered with carbon nanotubes. These are microscopic
Screen Shot On Linked Video
cylindrical molecules that are 1/10,000 the thickness of a strand of hair, light as air, stronger than steel, and most importantly, they transmit heat quickly. Dr. Baughman presented the irony of these carbon nanotubes when he stated that their original purpose was to see how they would work as speakers. Sheets of these nanotubes were aligned in an underwater container and heated to elevated temperatures through electrical stimulation. The heat that’s transferred to the surrounding areas generates a temperature gradient, which then causes light rays to bend away from the concealed object. Ta-da! The object has now disappeared to the naked eye. Source: Article, IBM predicts mind control computers
with in 5 years. five innovations that the company believes will influence the technology landscape in the next five years. Compared to last year’s bold claims on 3D telepresence, this year’s list feels like a bit of a low ball, with the exception of one thing. Mind control. Read on to watch a presentation video and Chris Fitzsimmons' thoughts on the five predictions. 1. People power will come to life : IBM is predicting that much of the “wasted” energy in our daily lives will be collected and re-used thanks to developments in renewable energy technologies. Behind the jargon, they are essentially suggesting that wasted kinetic energy from bicycle wheels, and even footfall will be recaptured and stored in batteries. Slightly disappointingly the video calls this Created
Energy and therefore breaks the thermodynamics. By installing piezoelectric devices and dynamos on bikes, and in shoes or floors, IBM believes we will charge batteries for our electronics devices, and even light our homes. The piezoelectric floor tile has already been demonstrated, the dynamo on a bicycle is older than I am, and wave power is not new. 2. You will never need a password again: IBM’s second prediction is that the concept of a password as we currently recognise it will cease to be. It will instead be replaced by unique biometric signatures based on things like our voice, retinal scan or finger prints or a combination of the above. This again is already
Whilst the happening. My laptop the above. This again is already happening. My laptop recognises my face when I log in, without the need for me to type my password. What’s perhaps more interesting is the idea that this biometric identity would be transferable between services such as ATM’s or online accounts. 3. Mind reading is no longer science fiction: Ok, so this is the good stuff. IBM is actively pursuing research into technologies that map brain patterns and allow them to be used to control interaction
with our devices. in the video are clearly aimed at consumer tech such as laptops and mobile phones, there’s no reason that this shouldn’t extend in the future to control systems for AV. Although I can see a whole lot of potentially embarrassing support conversations when systems don’t react in the way they are expected to. A wandering mind in a meeting to have some unexpected results. 4. The digital divide will cease to exist: Back to low-balling again this one I’m afraid. Essentially, the
prediction says that the examples cited availability of cheap mobile phone technology will mean that even those in developing countries will have ready access to services and information via the internet. This is of course a good thing, but hardly earth shattering in its adventurousness. Surely IBM’s finest minds can do better. 5. Junk mail will become priority mail: This one is interesting just because of its disturbing possibilities. IBM believe that in the future there will be no such thing as spam, just
targeted information based on what intelligent devices and systems know about your preferences. So far, so good. The really weird part is where they suggest that your devices will make purchases and reservations on your behalf. I’m not sure how comfortable I am with the idea that my iPhone will tell Amazon or Chelsea FC what I want to buy, and then buy it for me. Above Images Source: screen Shot On Uploaded, Source: InAVate, Top Ten Science Discoveries Of 2012- (1) The observation of an elusive sub-atomic particle:
known as the Higgs boson, has been heralded by the journal Science as the most important scientific discovery of 2012. This particle, which was first hypothesized more than 40 years ago, holds the key to explaining how other elementary particles (those that aren't made up of smaller particles), such as electrons and quarks, get their mass. In addition to recognizing the detection of this particle as the 2012 Breakthrough of the Year, Science and its international nonprofit publisher, AAAS, have identified nine other groundbreaking scientific achievements from the past year and compiled them into a top 10 list that will appear in the 21 December issue. Researchers unveiled evidence of the Higgs boson on 4 July, fitting into place the last missing piece of a puzzle that physicists call the standard model of particle physics. This theory explains how particles interact via electromagnetic forces, weak nuclear forces and strong nuclear forces in order to make up matter in the universe. However, until this year, researchers could not explain how the elementary particles involved got their mass. "Simply assigning masses to the particles makes the theory go haywire mathematically," explained Science news correspondent Adrian Cho, who wrote about the discovery for the journal's Breakthrough of the Year feature. "So, mass must somehow emerge from interactions of the otherwise mass-less particles themselves. That's where the Higgs comes in." As Cho explains, physicists assume that space is filled by a "Higgs field," which is similar to an electric field. Particles interact with this Higgs field to obtain energy and—thanks to Einstein's famous mass-energy equivalence—mass as well. "Just as an electric field consists of particles called photons, the Higgs field consists of Higgs bosons woven into the vacuum," he explains. "Physicists have now blasted them out of the vacuum and into brief existence." But, a view to the Higgs boson did not come easy—or cheap. Thousands of researchers working with a 5.5-billion-dollar atom-smasher at a particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, called CERN, used two gargantuan particle detectors, known as ATLAS and CMS, to spot the long-sought boson. It is unclear where this discovery will lead the field of particle physics in the future but its impact on the physics community this year has been undeniable, which is why Science calls the detection of the Higgs boson the 2012 Breakthrough of the Year. The special 21 December issue of the journal includes three articles written by researchers at CERN, which help to explain how this breakthrough was achieved. Science's list of nine other pioneering scientific achievements from 2012 follows. (2) The Denisovan Genome: A new technique that binds
special molecules to single strands of DNA allowed researchers to sequence the complete Denisovan genome from just a fragment of bone from an ancient pinky finger. The genomic sequence has allowed researchers to compare Denisovans—archaic humans closely related to Neandertals—with modern humans. It also revealed that the finger bone belonged to a girl with brown eyes, brown hair and brown skin who died in Siberia between 74,000 and 82,000 years ago. (3) Making Eggs From Stem Cells: Japanese researchers showed that embryonic stem cells from mice could
be coaxed into becoming viable egg cells. They clinched the case when the cells, fertilized by sperm in the laboratory, developed into live mouse pups born of surrogate mothers. The method requires female mice to host the developing eggs in their bodies for a time, so it falls short of scientists' ultimate goal: deriving egg cells entirely in the laboratory. But, it provides a powerful tool for studying genes and other factors that influence fertility and egg cell development. (4) Curiosity's Landing System: Though unable to test their rover's entire landing system under Martian conditions, mission engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California,
safely and precisely placed the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. The 3.3-ton rover entry vehicle was too massive for traditional landings, so the team took inspiration from cranes and helicopters to create a "sky crane" landing system that dangled Curiosity, wheels deployed, at the end of three cables. The flawless landing reassured planners that NASA could someday land a second mission near an earlier rover to pick up samples the rover collected and return them to Earth. (5) X-ray Laser Provides Protein Structure: Researchers used an X-ray laser, which shines a billion times brighter than traditional synchrotron sources, to determine the structure of an enzyme required by the Trypanosoma brucei parasite,the cause of
African sleeping sickness. The advance demonstrated the potential of X-ray lasers to decipher proteins that conventional X-ray sources cannot. (6) Precision Engineering of Genomes: The revision and deletion of DNA in higher organisms has generally been a hit-or-miss proposition. But, in 2012, a tool known as TALENs, which stands for "transcription activator-like effector nucleases," gave researchers the ability to alter or inactivate specific genes in zebrafish, toads, livestock and other animals—even cells from patients with disease. This technology, along with others that are emerging, is proving to be just as effective as (and cheaper than) established gene-targeting techniques, and it may allow researchers to determine specific roles for genes and mutations in both healthy and diseased
individuals. (7) Majorana Fermions: The existence of Majorana fermions, particles that (among other properties) act as their own antimatter and annihilate themselves, has been debated for more than seven decades. This year, a team of physicists and chemists in The Netherlands provided the first solid evidence that such exotic matter exists, in the form of quasi-particles: groups of interacting electrons that reported this year in more than 30 papers revealed that the human ehave like single particles. The discovery has already prompted efforts to incorporate Majorana fermions into quantum computing, as scientists think "qubits" made of these mysterious particles could be more efficient at storing and processing data than the bits currently used in
digital computers. (8) The Encode Project: A decade-long study that was genome is more "functional" than researchers had believed. Although only two percent of the genome codes for actual proteins, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements, or ENCODE, project indicated that about 80 percent of the genome is active, helping to turn genes on or off, for example. These new details should help researchers to understand the ways in which genes are controlled and to clarify some genetic risk factors for
diseases. (9) Brain-Machine Interfaces: The same team that had previously demonstrated how neural recordings from the brain could be used to move a cursor on a computer screen showed in 2012 that paralyzed human patients could move a mechanical arm with their minds and perform complex movements in three dimensions. The technology is still experimental—and extraordinarily expensive—but scientists are hopeful that more advanced algorithms could improve these neural prosthetics to help patients paralyzed by strokes, spinal injuries and other conditions. (10)Neutrino Mixing Angle: Hundreds of researchers working on the
Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment in China reported the last unknown parameter of a model that describes how elusive particles, known as neutrinos, morph from one type or "flavor" to another as they travel at near-light speed. The results show that neutrinos and anti-neutrinos could possibly change flavors differently and suggest that neutrino physics may someday help researchers to explain why the universe contains so much matter and so little antimatter. If physicists cannot identify new particles beyond the Higgs boson, neutrino physics could represent the future of particle physics. See videos of the stories here: http://video.sciencemag.org, Source: Nano Patents And Innovations
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