Technojection

Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool

2009-11-02T15:28:00.000-05:00

Windows 7 can be installed from a USB stick, a much needed functionality for netbooks that don't have CD/DVD drives. You need a 4GB or larger USB drive and the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool from Microsoft. This tool creates a bootable iso image and if your computer BIOS supports, can be booted from the USB drive.

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Muscle-Bound Computer Interface

2009-10-31T14:27:00.001-04:00

Forearm electrodes could enable new forms of hands-free computer interaction. Researchers at Microsoft, the University of Washington in Seattle, and the University of Toronto in Canada have come up with another way to interact with computers: a muscle-controlled interface that allows for hands-free, gestural interaction.

A band of electrodes attach to a person's forearm and read electrical activity from different arm muscles. These signals are then correlated to specific hand gestures, such as touching a finger and thumb together, or gripping an object tighter than normal. The researchers envision using the technology to change songs in an MP3 player while running or to play a game like Guitar Hero without the usual plastic controller.

Muscle-based computer interaction isn't new. In fact, the muscles near an amputated or missing limb are sometimes used to control mechanical prosthetics. But, while researchers have explored muscle-computer interaction for nondisabled users before, the approach has had limited practicality. Inferring gestures reliably from muscle movement is difficult, so such interfaces have often been restricted to sensing a limited range of gestures or movements. The new muscle-sensing project is "going after healthy consumers who want richer input modalities," says Desney Tan, a researcher at Microsoft. As a result, he and his colleagues had to come up with a system that was inexpensive and unobtrusive and that reliably sensed a range of gestures.

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GE Introduces Handheld Ultrasound Device

2009-10-22T01:53:00.002-04:00

At the Web 2.0 Summit on Tuesday, GE CEO Jeff Immelt showed off a forthcoming hand-held ultrasound device called Vscan, calling it "the stethoscope of the 21st century." The device, which features a clam-shell design, with a small screen on one side and a circular input pad on the other, accepts a cable terminated in an ultrasound sensor. It could easily be mistaken for a cell phone. Immelt didn't provide any pricing information. He described the device as being digitally capable, despite it's lack of WiFi connectivity.

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Free will is not an illusion after all

2009-10-12T17:01:00.003-04:00

Champions of free will, take heart. A landmark 1980s experiment that purported to show free will doesn't exist is being challenged.

In 1983, neuroscientist Benjamin Libet asked volunteers wearing scalp electrodes to flex a finger or wrist. When they did, the movements were preceded by a dip in the signals being recorded, called the "readiness potential". Libet interpreted this RP as the brain preparing for movement.

Crucially, the RP came a few tenths of a second before the volunteers said they had decided to move. Libet concluded that unconscious neural processes determine our actions before we are ever aware of making a decision.

Since then, others have quoted the experiment as evidence that free will is an illusion – a conclusion that was always controversial, particularly as there is no proof the RP represents a
decision to move.

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Cracking The Brain's Numerical Code: Researchers Can Tell What Number A Person Has Seen

2009-10-12T17:00:00.000-04:00

By carefully observing and analyzing the pattern of activity in the brain, researchers have found that they can tell what number a person has just seen. They can similarly tell how many dots a person has been presented with, according to a report published online on September 24th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.

These findings confirm the notion that numbers are encoded in the brain via detailed and specific activity patterns and open the door to more sophisticated exploration of humans' high-level numerical abilities...

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Vote for ideas in Project 10 to the 100

2009-09-29T01:38:00.002-04:00

Project 10¹⁰⁰ is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. Thousands of people from more than 170 countries submitted more than 150,000 ideas. During the review process, 16 "big ideas" are distilled and each are inspired by numerous individual submissions. You can vote to realize one of them here. Voting ends on October 8, 2009.

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Predicting Drug Response from Brain Waves

2009-09-28T15:48:00.000-04:00

Brain waves measured using a simple device just one week into treatment can indicate whether a depressed patient should continue taking a medication or be switched to another. The study, which was conducted at nine sites across the U.S., could significantly reduce the time it takes to effectively treat major depression.

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Luxury Bed Maker Hästens Introduces Mindspa iPhone Application

2009-09-28T15:46:00.003-04:00

Hästens, the luxury bed maker from Sweden, and NeuroTech, Inc., announced the introduction of the new MindSpa application for the iPhone™ and iPod Touch™, the most recent technological extension of the company’s expertise in the field of sleep and relaxation. The MindSpa application takes the unique capabilities of the iPhone™ and iPod Touch™ to a new level by simultaneously providing auditory and visual neural brainwave entrainment with biofeedback. This is the first iPhone™ application to combine three scientifically proven modalities to provide deep relaxation leading to a calmer mind and better sleep.

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Memories Exist Even When Forgotten

2009-09-22T18:46:00.001-04:00

New research by UC Irvine neuroscientists suggests the memory exists – you simply can't retrieve it. scientists discovered that a person's brain activity while remembering an event is very similar to when it was first experienced, even if specifics can't be recalled.

"If the details are still there, hopefully we can find a way to access them," said Jeff Johnson, postdoctoral researcher at UCI's Center for the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory and lead author of the study, appearing Sept. 10 in the journal Neuron.

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Magnetic levitation applied to a mammal

2009-09-16T15:18:00.005-04:00

With the aid of a strong magnetic field, mice have been made to levitate for hours at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. The floating rodents could provide a valuable insight into how astronauts are affected by extended spells in zero gravity.

The effects on the health of an animal spending hours or days in such an intense magnetic field are unknown, though rats subjected to a field of 9.4 teslas – just over half as strong as the one used on the mice – suffered no obvious ill effects.

This system is too small to be used on people, but could you build something similar to levitate humans one day? "Theoretically I think you could," says inventor, "but the cost would be prohibitive."

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'Gene cure' for colour blindness

2009-09-16T15:11:00.001-04:00

Scientists say they are a step closer to curing colour blindness using gene therapy. A US team were able to restore full colour vision to adult monkeys born without the ability to distinguish between the colours red and green. Nature journal describes the technique used by the researchers at the University of Washington. Although more studies are needed, the same treatment may work for humans who are colour blind, experts believe.

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Humans Glow in Visible Light

2009-08-14T16:25:00.001-04:00

The human body, especially the face, emits "ultraweak photons" in visible light that varies during the day and is 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive, Tohoku Institute of Technology researchers have found.

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TEDMED

2009-08-09T23:35:00.000-04:00

This year TEDMED conference will be in on 27-30 October 2009 in San Diego, CA. TEDMED celebrates conversations that demonstrate the intersection and connections between all things medical and healthcare related: from personal health to public health, devices to design and Hollywood to the hospital. Together, this encompasses more than twenty percent of our GNP in America while touching everyone's life around the globe.

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Optogenetics - a new technology that combines genetic engineering, lasers, neurology and surgery

2009-06-26T18:10:00.004-04:00

The best current technology for hard-to-treat disorders can get a difficult direct neural treatment called Deep Brain Stimulation, or DBS. An electrode is inserted down to the area associated with the disorder being treated and left in place. After the surgery has healed, the implant pulses current at a frequency that either activates or quiets the area responsible for the condition. Affecting cells further from the electrode means passing more current through nearby cells. DBS is by far the most precise clinical procedure for controlling areas of the brain, but it’s still disappointingly non-specific.

A new technique called optogenetics combines genetic engineering, lasers, neurology and surgery to create a direct control mechanism.

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Problems are solved by sleeping

2009-06-20T14:49:00.000-04:00

Volunteers who entered REM during sleep improved their creative problem solving ability by almost 40%, University of California San Diego researchers showed.

The researchers believe REM sleep allows the brain to form new nerve connections without the interference of other thought pathways that occur when we are awake or in non-dream-state sleep.

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Wireless Power Harvesting for Cell Phones

2009-06-19T17:52:00.000-04:00

A cell phone that never needs recharging might sound too good to be true, but Nokia says it's developing technology that could draw enough power from ambient radio waves to keep a cell-phone handset topped up.

The Nokia device will work on the same principles as a crystal radio set or radio frequency identification (RFID) tag: by converting electromagnetic waves into an electrical signal. This requires two passive circuits. "Even if you are only getting microwatts, you can still harvest energy, provided your circuit is not using more power than it's receiving," says Markku Rouvala a researcher from the Nokia Research Centre, in Cambridge, U.K.

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Ultrasound might provide a new, noninvasive way to control brain activity

2009-06-04T03:10:00.000-04:00

Ultrasound waves, currently used in medicine for prenatal scans and other diagnostic purposes, could one day be used as a noninvasive way to control brain activity. Over the past two years, scientists have begun experimenting with low-frequency, low-intensity ultrasound that can penetrate the skull and activate or silence brain cells. Researchers hope that the technology could provide an alternative to more-invasive techniques, such as deep-brain stimulation (DBS) and vagus nerve stimulation, which are used to treat a growing number of neurological disorders.

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IBM's Watson takes on Jeopardy

2009-05-27T23:09:00.002-04:00

IBM has unveiled the details of its plans to build a computing system that can understand complex questions and answer with enough precision and speed to compete on a favorite quiz show, Jeopardy!. Onstage, completely isolated from other computers, the Internet, or human help, the Watson computer will receive the clue electronically, precisely when the human players see it. Competing in this way on Jeopardy! makes a great avenue for comparison between humans and machines. Competing at Jeopardy! is just the first step for DeepQA.

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Will designer brains divide humanity?

2009-05-16T18:39:00.001-04:00

We are on the brink of technological breakthroughs that could augment our mental powers beyond recognition. It will soon be possible to boost human brainpower with electronic "plug-ins" or even by genetic enhancement. What will this mean for the future of humanity?

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Ultra-Efficient Organic LEDs

2009-05-16T18:33:00.003-04:00

An organic light-emitting diode (OLED) developed in Germany has the potential to produce the same quality of white light as incandescent bulbs but with power efficiencies considerably better than even fluorescent lighting.

The prototype OLED could emerge as an ultra-efficient light source for displays and general lighting, says Sebastian Reineke, who led the research at the Institute for Applied Photophysics, in Dresden, Germany. The long-term goal is to fabricate the device using conventional low-cost roll-to-roll printing.

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Emotional speech leaves 'signature' on the brain

2009-05-16T18:28:00.004-04:00

If I was reading this sentence aloud, your brain would be able to interpret whether I was speaking in anger, joy, relief, or sadness. That's because emotions in speech leave distinct "signatures" in the brain of the listener.

Now, for the first time, brain scans have now characterised those patterns. The finding could help determine where in the brain deficits in emotion processing occur in people with psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia.

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Possible site of free will found in brain

2009-05-09T14:26:00.002-04:00

Free will, or at least the place where we decide to act, is sited in a part of the brain called the parietal cortex, new research suggests. When a neurosurgeon electrically jolted this region in patients undergoing surgery, they felt a desire to, say, wiggle their finger, roll their tongue or move a limb. Stronger electrical pulses convinced patients they had actually performed these movements, although their bodies remained motionless. "What it tells us is there are specific brain regions that are involved in the consciousness of your movement," says Angela Sirigu (pdf format), a neuroscientist at the CNRS Cognitive Neuroscience Centre in Bron, France, who led the study.

The Science of Concentration

2009-05-05T11:02:00.000-04:00

In the nearer future, neuroscientists might help you focus by observing your brain activity and providing biofeedback as you practice strengthening your concentration. Researchers have already observed higher levels of synchrony in the brains of people who regularly meditate.

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Augmented Reality

2009-05-03T22:21:00.002-04:00

EARBUDS can pipe audio directly from a portable player to the ear. But did you ever imagine that eyeglasses or contact lenses could deliver digital images directly from a smartphone to the retina?
Several companies are already developing prototypes...

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Neuroenhancing

2009-05-03T22:20:00.000-04:00

A young man I’ll call Alex recently graduated from Harvard. As a history major, Alex wrote about a dozen papers a semester. He also ran a student organization, for which he often worked more than forty hours a week; when he wasn’t on the job, he had classes. Weeknights were devoted to all the schoolwork that he couldn’t finish during the day, and weekend nights were spent drinking with friends and going to dance parties. “Trite as it sounds,” he told me, it seemed important to “maybe appreciate my own youth.” Since, in essence, this life was impossible, Alex began taking Adderall to make it possible...

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