Monkey Thinks Robot into Action

In a dramatic display of the potential of prosthetic arms, a monkey at the University of Pittsburgh was able to use his brain to directly control a robotic arm and feed himself a marshmallow. The research, published on May 28, 2008 in the journal Nature, is the first to show that an interface that converts brain signals directly into action is sophisticated enough to perform a practical function: eating. Researchers who led the work have just begun human tests of a related technology.

[ more ] [ abstract ]

Colleges see the future: Video games

Academics envision uses beyond Grand Theft Auto.
By Tom Avril

With an odd-looking strip of black foam fastened to his forehead, the young man stared intently at an image of a manhole cover on his computer screen.

Suddenly, without touching the mouse or keyboard, he made the manhole cover rise into the virtual air.

A magic trick?

No, a video game - one that Hasan Ayaz, a Drexel University engineering student, was able to manipulate directly with his brain.

[ more ]

Improving anxiety treatment with brain imaging

In a new article published in Biological Psychiatry on May 1st, researchers report their findings on the potential use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to match treatments for patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).

Subjects diagnosed with GAD underwent brain scans both before and after treatment with venlafaxine. As hypothesized, the fMRI data predicted who would do well on the drug and who would not.

They found that the larger the prefrontal cortex reaction, and the smaller the amygdala reaction, the more likely it was that the patient had a positive response to the venlafaxine.

There are no current biomarkers for predicting how well a patient will respond to anti-anxiety medicines. Patients often have to go through multiple medications and dosages to find one that works.

[ more ]

Microsoft Worldwide Telescope

Microsoft Research has released the Spring Beta version of a new powerful web-based application called Worldwide Telescope for exploring the universe.

A researcher at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics, Roy Gould gave the first public demo of the World Wide Telescope developed by Curtis Wong and his team at Microsoft.

"While watching the demo, I realized the way I look at the world was about to change."
-Robert Scoble

Here's the demo presentation at TEDTalk:



Related story at nytimes.com

Memristor - Missing Fourth Electronic Circuit Element

In 1971, a University of California, Berkeley, engineer predicted that there should be a fourth element: a memory resistor, or memristor. But no one knew how to build one. Now, 37 years later, electronics have finally gotten small enough to reveal the secrets of that fourth element. The memristor, Hewlett-Packard researchers revealed on April 30, 2008 in the journal Nature, had been hiding in plain sight all along—within the electrical characteristics of certain nanoscale devices. They think the new element could pave the way for applications both near- and far-term, from nonvolatile RAM to realistic neural networks.

HP Labs has made a nano-scale device which stores data, explains previous anomalies in nano-device characteristics, and may be able to act as a synapse in analogue neural networks. It is also the first physical implementation of the memristor, a theoretical partner to resistors, capacitors and inductors invented in 1971.

[ more ] [ Memristor Theory ]

Consolas Font Pack for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 or 2008

Microsoft has just released a new highly legible monospaced font for use in Visual Studio 2005 and 2008. The font called Consolas is designed for ClearType and allows for more comfortable reading of extended text on-screen. Recommended :)



To get the font, you need to visit Microsoft download page. The setup file installs the font and sets it as the default font for Visual Studio.

[ Download ]

New way to save energy: Disappearing ink

The Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and parent company Xerox are experimenting with a type of paper and a complimentary printer that would produce documents that fade away after 16 to 24 hours. A restaurant, for instance, could print its daily specials on a piece of paper, attach the pieces of paper to menus, and then collect the sheets of then-blank paper in the morning to run through the printer again.

How does it work? The paper is coated with photosensitive chemicals that turn dark when hit with UV light.

Users don't have to wait for the paper to fade either. By running it through the special printer made for this paper, the printer will erase the old image before putting the new one on.

The paper and printer could hit the market in a few years.

The same sheets of paper can be run through the printer hundreds of time, according to tests conducted by Xerox, said Eric Shrader, area manager, energy systems, device hardware laboratory at Xerox. Typically, the paper isn't reusable only when it gets damaged or crumpled.

[ more ]

Cool Products Expo 2008

Earlier this month, seventh annual Cool Product Expo at Stanford University School of Business took place in California. There were many interesting products. Exhibitor list can be browsed online at the homepage of the expo.

[ more ]

A Training Tool for Athletes

A high-tech armband is helping athletes find their rhythm on the basketball court by playing a special tune when the athletes move their arms correctly.

CSIRO is developing wearable body mapping garments that the Australian Institute of Sport is assessing for improving sports performance. In a current project with the Australian netball team, an interactive garment is being used to train goalshooters in automatic rhythms to enable their natural action to remain undisturbed by their conscious thoughts in stressful situations.

In 2006, CSIRO built a virtual air guitar, known as the Wearable Instrument Shirt (WIS) that lets users play air guitar simply by moving one arm to pick chords and the other to strum the imaginary instrument’s strings.

[ more ]

A new device to translate thoughts into speech

Ambient Corporation, a company based in Champaign, IL, that develops communications technologies for people with speaking disabilities, is calling its latest system "voiceless communication". The company has engineered a neckband that translates a wearer's thoughts into speech so that, without saying a word, he or she can have a cell-phone conversation or query search engines in public.

The device, called Audeo picks up the neurological signals from the brain that are being sent to the vocal cords--a person must specifically think about voicing words--and then wirelessly transmits them to a computer, which translates them into synthesized speech. At the moment, the device has a limited vocabulary: 150 words and phrases.

[ more ]