Scientists develop software that can map dreams

Researchers at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories succeeded in processing and displaying images directly from the human brain, they said in a study unveiled ahead of publication in the US magazine Neuron.

While the team for now has managed to reproduce only simple images from the brain, they said the technique could eventually be used to figure out dreams and other secrets inside people's minds.

"It was the first time in the world that it was possible to visualize what people see directly from the brain activity," the private institute said in a statement.

"By applying this technology, it may become possible to record and replay subjective images that people perceive like dreams."

When people look at an object, the eye's retina recognises an image that is converted into electrical signals which go into the brain's visual cortex. The team, led by chief researcher Yukiyasu Kamitani, succeeded in catching the signals and then reconstructing what people see.

In their experiment, the researchers showed people the six letters in the word "neuron" and then succeeded in reconstructing the letters on a computer screen by measuring their brain activity.

[ more ] [ also ]

IBM seeks to simulate brain

IBM Research and five universities have partnered to create low-power-consumption and compact-sized computing systems that they expect will simulate and emulate the brain’s abilities for sensation, perception, action, interaction, and cognition.


IBM’s proposal, “Cognitive computing via synaptronics and supercomputing,” (C2S2) outlines research to be conducted over the next nine months in areas including synaptronics, material science, neuromorphic circuitry, supercomputing simulations, and virtual environments.

Encouraging the effort, IBM and its collaborators have been awarded $4.9 million in funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the first phase of DARPA’s Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) initiative.

Initial C2S2 research will focus on demonstrating nanoscale, low-power synapse-like devices and on "uncovering the functional microcircuits of the brain," IBM said, noting that the long-term mission of C2S2 is to demonstrate low-power, compact cognitive computers that approach mammalian-scale intelligence.

[ more ]

First superconducting transistor promises PC revolution

The world's first superconducting transistor, a long-standing goal for applied physicists, could lead to dramatically faster microchips. Andrea Caviglia and his colleagues at the University of Geneva in Switzerland grew a single crystal containing two metal oxides, strontium titanate and lanthanum aluminate, as separate segments. At the interface of these materials, the team found a layer of free electrons called an electron gas (Science, vol 317, p 1196). At 0.3 kelvin - just above absolute zero - these electrons flow without resistance and so create a superconductor. Now the same group says it can switch this superconductivity on and off by applying a voltage to the interface. The result is a superconducting version of the field effect transistor (FET) - a mainstay of digital electronics.

[ more ]

Tracking Flu from Search Engine Query Data

Google released an experimental tool that tracks the intensity and movement of influenza virus across United States by comparing the usage search keywords related to flu. The tool, known as Google Flu Trends, makes use of the fact that, before they go to the doctor's office, many people will search for information about what ails them. Researchers from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) found a strong link between these searches and reports from doctors of flu outbreaks a week to 10 days later.

[ more ] [ manuscript ]

Direct Brain-to-Muscle Electric Circuit

An external electrical circuit connecting the brain directly to a muscle allowed paralyzed monkeys to move their arms, an advance that could lead to neuroprosthetics for humans with spinal cord injuries.

Brain-machine interfaces have previously been used to control robotic arms and computer cursors, but they required researchers to identify entire populations of neurons already associated with movement. By contrast, researchers recently identified neurons not previously associated with motion, then used them to stimulate individual muscles rather than a robotic device.

[ more ] [ nature ]

Stem Cells without Side Effects

Researchers have created healthy stem cells from adult cells--no embryo required.

Last year, researchers announced one of the most promising methods yet for creating ethically neutral stem cells: reprogramming adult human cells to act like embryonic stem cells. That process involved using a retrovirus, but now scientists have found a way to effect the same reprogramming without using a harmful virus--a method that paves the way for tissue transplants made from a patient's own cells.

[ more ]

Project 10 to the 100th

Project 10¹⁰⁰ (pronounced "Project 10 to the 100th") is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. Organized by Google, anyone can submit an idea that can change the world by October 20, 2008. After the voting period, 5 ideas will be selected and a total of 10 million is committed by Google to jump start these ideas.

www.project10tothe100.com

Awaiting the Google Phone

In New York next week, Google and T-Mobile will unveil the long-awaited Google Phone. The device, made by the Taiwanese cell-phone company HTC, is expected to have a large touch screen, a QWERTY keypad, and a 3.1-megapixel camera, among other features. More significant than the gadget itself, however, is the software that it contains: a cell-phone operating system developed by Google called Android.

[ more ]

Idea paint

A new kind of paint makes your meeting room walls a white-board that you can draw and erase.




See www.ideapaint.com

Google Chrome

Google is planning to launch a webbrowser called Google Chrome that will rival Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla FireFox. Here's some background information and new features of Google's Chrome: Google Chrome comic book.

[ more ]

Side-by-side configuration is incorrect

If you develop a native Windows application with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and try to run it on another machine, you might get an error message complaining about side-by-side configuration is incorrect. The application eventlog (control panel>administrative tools) will reveal that this is related to missing VC90 CRT. So this error message means that your application needs Visual C++ runtime library to function.

Retail version of Visual C++ runtime can be downloaded from Microsoft. Here is the x86 version. On the other hand, the debug version of Visual C++ runtime is not allowed to be distributed due to license issues. So, if you would like to make your application run on a machine without development environment, there are two options.

1) Build your program to statically link the runtime. To do that, in the project property page under "Configuration Properties > C/C++ > Code Generation", change run-time library from "Multi-threaded DLL (/MD)" to "Multi-threaded (/MT)".

2) Build your program to dynamically link the runtime AND install visual c++ redistributable (download link) on the target machine.

Happy coding...

GEMM Therapy

GEMM (Generatore Elettro Magnetico Modulato) is a state of the art therapeutic device generating specially modulated, low power (0.25 watt) radio waves.

The non-invasive GEMM Therapy is based on the breakthrough discovery of Dr Seckiner Gorgun on molecular communication. The GEMM Device can broadcast radio waves at the various electromagnetic resonance language that communicates with the target proteins in the cells who are responsible for regulating biological processes. This direct communication enables GEMM to provide significant therapeutic benefits for a wide range of diseases and medical conditions. GEMM's therapeutic waves are at the target protein's precisely calculated specific resonant frequency in order to give orders to stop, modify or reverse the malfunctioning processes. The Therapy has already been utilized in several hospitals in Turkey, Italy and Germany where medical doctors reported great success.

[ more ]

View multiple Excel files at the same

There's a simple setting that allows excel to display multiple files next to or on top of each other (like word, pdf, etc.). This is useful especially if you have two monitors or a large monitor and would like to work on two excel files at the same time.

Here's what you need to do:

Excel 2003: Go to "Tools > Options" Select the “General” tab and place a check mark at “Ignore other Applications”.

Excel 2007: Office Button > Excel Options > Advanced Tab > General Section > "Ignore other Applications that use dynamic data exchange"

Click OK and you are done!.

Also note that there's "side by side comparison" feature of Excel.

Breakthrough Battery Life: Up to 19 Hours on a Single Charge

Dell launched new lines of Latitude and Precision laptops, some targeted specifically at "digital nomads." One of the systems boasts a whopping 19 hours of battery life. The company also announced a new dedicated chip and second OS that enables near-instant access to e-mail, calendar and Web without booting Windows.

[ more ]

Brain-wave Test Challenges Vegetative-State Diagnosis

Tests using an EEG have shown unexpected cortical functioning in vegetative patients. Niels Birbaumer, a neurobiologist at the University of Tübingen, in Germany, used EEG recordings to study the brain activity of patients diagnosed as vegetative and found unexpected levels of cortical activity.

In one of the studies, Birbaumer and his colleagues looked for patterns in the brain’s electrical activity as patients listened to sentences being read aloud. In the experiment, patients listened to a series of seven-word sentences. Half the time the sentences were semantically logical. The other half of the sentences ended with a nonsensical word. As the patients listened to the words, the researchers listened to the electrical activity in their brains. With EEG data from 100 trials, the researchers pieced together a signature response for each patient who gave some indication of how he processed the errors he was hearing.

[ more ]

Cell change 'keeps organs young'

Researchers may have found a way to halt the biological clock which slows down our bodies over the decades. A US team thinks it may have found the genetic levers to help boost a system vital to cleaning up faulty proteins within our cells.

The journal Nature Medicine reported that the livers of genetically-altered older mice worked as well as those in younger animals. They suggested it might one day help people with progressive brain diseases. Dr Ana Maria Cuervo, commented that "These results show it's possible to correct this protein 'logjam' that occurs in our cells as we get older, thereby perhaps helping us to enjoy healthier lives well into old age".

[ more ]

Nerve cells made from elderly patient's skin cells

Skin cells from an elderly patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) have been ‘reprogrammed’ to generate motor neurons, the type of nerve cells that die as the disease progresses.

It is the first time that an induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell line has been created from a patient with a genetic illness. Like embryonic stem cells, iPS cells have the potential to develop into almost any of the body’s cell types and offer new disease insights.

Researchers made the iPS cells using viral vectors to introduce four genes into skin cells taken from two elderly patients with a mild form of ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). This genetic reprogramming technique was first developed in 2006 in Japan. Although results are not yet reported in the peer-reviewed literature, posters at a stem-cell meeting in June described iPS cell lines from people with Alzheimer’s disease, Down’s syndrome, muscular dystrophy, and more.

Such cell lines could be most useful for diseases that are hardest to research. For example, in ALS, because the dying neurons reside within the spinal cord, they are nearly impossible to study in living patients, says Henderson. “We now have cells in culture that are genetically the same as in those with the disease.”

[ more ]

Adult stem cells help heal broken bones

Adult stem cells are specialized cells with the ability to regenerate tissue in response to damage. However, many patients lack sufficient numbers of these cells and thus cannot heal properly.

Researchers have used adult stem cells in a few cases to improve fracture healing, but further studies were needed to show that this method was truly effective and safe before it can be pursued as a new treatment.

Now scientists at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have provided the scientific foundation for future clinical trials of this approach by demonstrating in animal models that these cells can be used to repair broken bones.

"This finding is critical to patients who lack the proper healing process and to individuals prone to broken bones, such as those with osteoporosis and the rare genetic condition known as brittle bone disease," said Dr. Anna Spagnoli, associate professor of pediatrics and biomedical engineering in the UNC School of Medicine and senior author on the study.

[ more ]

Alzheimer's drug 'halts' decline

UK scientists have developed a drug which may halt the progression of Alzheimer's disease.

Trials of the drug, known as Rember, in 321 patients showed an 81% difference in rate of mental decline compared with those not taking the treatment. Alzheimer's experts were optimistic about the results, but said larger trials were now needed.

[ more ]

New clue to Alzheimer's found in form of protein

Researchers have uncovered a new clue to the cause of Alzheimer's disease. The brains of people with the memory-robbing form of dementia are cluttered with a plaque made up of beta-amyloid, a sticky protein. But there long has been a question whether this is a cause of the disease or a side effect. Also involved are tangles of a protein called tau; some scientists suspect this is the cause.

Now, researchers have caused Alzheimer's symptoms in rats by injecting them with one particular form of beta-amyloid. Injections with other forms of beta-amyloid did not cause illness, which may explain why some people have beta-amyloid plaque in their brains but do not show disease symptoms.

[ more ]

Phoenix Mars Lander Confirms Frozen Water On Red Planet

Scientists relishing confirmation of water ice near the surface beside NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander anticipate even bigger discoveries from the robotic mission in the weeks ahead.

The mission has the right instruments for analyzing soil and ice to determine whether the local environment just below the surface of far-northern Mars has ever been favorable for microbial life. Key factors are whether the water ever becomes available as a liquid and whether organic compounds are present that could provide chemical building blocks and energy for life. Phoenix landed on May 25 for a Mars surface mission planned to last for three months.

[ more ] [ also ]

3D TV from Philips

Philips's new displays bring the 3D experience without the need for special 3D glasses. Philips' WOWvx displays are now beginning to appear in shopping malls, movie-theater lobbies, and theme parks worldwide. The technology uses image-processing software, plus display hardware that includes sheets of tiny lenses atop LCD screens. The lenses project slightly different images to viewers' left and right eyes, which the brain translates into a perception of depth.

[ more ] [ website ]

Microsoft Windows Search 4.0

Microsoft released the latest version of Windows Search on June 3, 2008. When installed on Vista Service Pack (SP) 1 systems, Windows Search 4.0 updates and replaces the existing search files. On Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, Windows Search extends the existing search functionality.

According to company officials, among the new features added to Windows Search 4.0:

• Faster querying and indexing (”how much faster depends on the machine and the data,” according to company officials)
• Improved reliability (”system failures won’t get in the way of the indexer and all data will be scanned and available for searches,” according to a spokesperson)
• Broader PC-to-PC searches (a k a “Remote index discovery”)
• More Group Policy controls over aspects of search functionality

[ download ]

Tomatoes gush from Dizayn's pipe

A private Turkish company known for its successful research and development (R&D) projects has produced a unique type of tomato that grows only in water, which experts claim has no equivalent anywhere in the world.

The Dizayn Group, a prominent actor in the Turkish heating and plumbing sectors, produced the special type of tomatoes that do not need soil to grow at its R&D center in the Mediterranean city of Antalya. The total amount produced in one year is 1,600 kilograms from a single tomato seed. The product will soon be available on the market under the name “Miracle.”

[ more ]

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 ]

X PRIZE Vision

After the successful completion of Ansari X Prize space competition, new $10 million awards are announced such as Google X Prize for Lunar Landing, Archon X Prize for Genomics and Progressive Automotive X Prize...

X Prize Foundation

Windows Vista Indexing and Outlook 2007 Search

If you are having trouble finding newest items in your search on Windows Vista, you are not alone. Check the following links for known issues from Microsoft Support. It is a known problem that search indexing may stop on Windows Vista. Here's a list of possible reasons along with solutions:

You cannot search RTF e-mail messages in Outlook 2007
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;927595

You cannot index e-mail messages or search e-mail messages when you run Outlook 2007 by using elevated user rights on a computer that is running Windows Vista
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;923937

How to troubleshoot performance issues in Outlook 2007
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940226

No results are returned when you search for e-mail items after you enable Instant Search in Outlook 2007
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927676

For those adventurous souls, here are some last resort suggestions for search problems in Outlook 2007. May be one of them can work for you...

• Ran scanost.exe (for Exchange account) and scanpst.exe (for local Archive folder) and fix errors
  
• Uncheck both Mailbox and Archive data files in Outlook search options. Restart Outlook
• Check both Mailbox and Archive data files in Outlook search options. Restart Outllok
• Rebuilt Index
• Restore Default from Indexing Options and reboot
• Ran %windir%\system32\fixmapi.exe and reboot, then ran Rebuild index

Physicists Make Artificial Black Hole Using Optical Fiber

Physicists at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, report that they have created a black hole's event horizon using laser pulses and microstructured optical fiber. Such a tabletop black hole, made from a length of optical fiber and laser light, may prove invaluable in understanding the characteristics of these exotic astronomical objects.

Physicists and astronomers believe that black holes are formed when huge stars collapse in on themselves at the end of their lives. They exist at the centers of galaxies, where they act as giant engines that drive the motion of stars, according to astronomers. However, studying them is extremely difficult, particularly because in astronomy one can study only the information carried by light. In the case of black holes, the absence of light means astrophysicists have to rely on indirect means, such as inferring the presence of black holes by the way their gravity bends light outside their event horizons—a phenomenon scientists call gravitational lensing.

Having access to an artificial black hole in the lab will allow astrophysicists to test predictions made by theorists. Physicists would particularly like to test new theories such as quantum gravity, which seeks to reconcile Einstein’s theory of general relativity with quantum mechanics.

[ more ]

Yazgac - A tool for typing Turkish...

There are special Turkish characters that are not part of standard US keyboard: (ç,ı,ş,ğ,ü,ö). For those living abroad and using a non-Turkish keyboard, usually dot-less versions of these characters are used (c,i,s,g,u,o) which is not correct or proper Turkish. Yazgac is intended to fix this problem.

Yazgac is a free desktop application, that allows you to type special Turkish characters without changing your keyboard layout or correct your text by automatically placing these characters. See its website for a presentation and video of its features and how it works.

[ more ]

Netflix Prize

In October 2006, Netflix announced a grand prize of one million dollars for a better movie-recommending algorithm that is at least 10 percent better than its own. Within two weeks, the DVD rental company had received 169 submissions, including three that were slightly superior to Cinematch, Netflix's recommendation software. After a month, more than a thousand programs had been entered, and the top scorers were almost halfway to the goal. But what started out looking simple suddenly got hard. The contest is expected to continue until 2011.

[ more ]

Open Yale - Free Yale College Courses Debut Online

Yale University is making some of its most popular undergraduate courses freely available to anyone in the world with access to the Internet.

The project, called Open Yale Courses, presents unique access to the full content of a selection of college-level courses and makes them available in various formats, including downloadable and streaming video, audio only and searchable transcripts of each lecture. Syllabi, reading assignments, problem sets and other materials accompany the courses.

Open Yale website: http://open.yale.edu/courses

[ more ]

Mind Reading with Functional MRI

Scientists can accurately predict which of a thousand pictures a person is looking at by analyzing brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) which is a brain imaging method that detects blood flow in the brain, giving an indirect measure of brain activity.

According to the study, published in the the journal Nature, scientists first gathered information about how the brain processes images by recording activity in the visual cortex as subjects looked at several thousand randomly selected pictures. Neurons in this part of the brain respond to specific aspects of the visual scene, such as a patch of strongly contrasting light and dark, so the activity recorded in each area of the brain scan reflects the visual information being processed by neurons in that area of the brain. The researchers compiled this information to develop a computer model that would predict the pattern of brain activity triggered by any image.

When volunteers were later shown a new image not included in the first set, the computer model was able to correctly predict which picture out of 120 or 1,000 possibilities the person looked at with 90 or 80 percent accuracy, respectively.

"They can do this with a surprising degree of accuracy," says Frank Tong, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, TN, who was not involved in the research. "People will be struck by how much visual information these researchers were able to extract from the brain."

[ more ]

Wireless Power Transmission: Tesla Revisited

In the late 19th century, Nikola Tesla, among other inventions, dreamed up wireless electric distribution. He drew up plans for a tower, about 57 meters tall, that he claimed would transmit power to kilometers away. However, he run out of funding before he could finish towers.

Then, a few years ago, Marin Soljačić, an assistant professor of physics at MIT started searching for ways to transmit power wirelessly. Instead of pursuing a long-distance scheme like Tesla's, he decided to look for midrange power transmission methods that could charge--or even power--portabl­e devices such as cell phones, PDAs, and laptops.

So far, the most effective setup consists of 60-centimeter copper coils and a 10-megahertz magnetic field; this transfers power over a distance of two meters with about 50 percent efficiency. The team is looking at silver and other materials to decrease coil size and boost efficiency. "While ideally it would be nice to have efficiencies at 100 percent, realistically, 70 to 80 percent could be possible for a typical application," says Soljačić.

[ more ]

Bloodless Diabetes Monitoring

A new noninvasive tool uses electromagnetic waves to measure glucose levels.

To track their blood sugar levels, patients with diabetes typically prick their fingers at least three times a day and feed blood samples into glucometers. It's a tedious and sometimes painful process, and a patient will often need to run a second test due to "insufficient blood" in the first sample. Now, researchers at Baylor University, in Waco, TX, have engineered a thumb-pad sensor that measures glucose levels via electromagnetic waves--no finger pricking required.

[ more ]

Emotiv's headset gives users mind-control over digital objects

Emotive Systems made a demo and showcased their brain signal reader helmet during this week Game Developers Conference, in San Francisco. Emotiv also said that the company is working on a partnership with IBM to integrate the brain control interface technology with IBM's virtual worlds projects.

The headset is designed to fit snugly on a user's head. The data it produces can, in theory, be plugged into a wide variety of software.

Emotive plans to ready the product for this Christmas for about $299. Many regard the product as part of the future of video game industry...

[ more ]

Useful tools for Pocket PC

FREE:
Google Maps - Self explainatory.
Map 2 Mobile (www.map24.com) - An alternative to Google Maps
Spb GPRS Monitor - great for monitoring network traffic from mobile device
Divx Mobile - Easier/Better to re-encode divx lower than try and rely on WMV.
PHM Registry Editor - Good, free registry editor
Foxit Reader for Windows Mobile - Better PDF reader than Acrobat, IMHO
PocketSNES - PocketSNES recompiled for landscape support.

NOT FREE:
Opera for Windows Mobile - A decent web-browser.
Spb Pocket Plus - Really useful for filling the holes in the WM5 interface.
Spb Mobile Shell - Enables a better phone based experience using all Pocket PC features..
TJ Pocket Dictonaries - English-English + 12 foreign dictionaries

DreamSpark - Microsoft to give free software to college students...

Microsoft unveiled the DreamSpark student program, which is a software giveaway that will ultimately provide millions of college and high school students worldwide with free access to the latest professional-grade Microsoft developer and designer tools. The program is available to all students whose studies touch on technology, design, math, science, and engineering.

DreamSpark program includes Visual Studio 2008 (professional), Expression Studio and Windows Server 2003.

To register and download: https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com

10 Emerging Technologies of 2008

Technology Review published the list of 2008:
Atomic Magnetometers
NanoRadio
Cellulolytic Enzymes
Offline Web Applications
Wireless Power
Probabilistic Chips
Modeling Surprise
Reality Mining
Connectomics
Graphene Transistors

Brain blanket boosts mind control

Researchers at Albany Medical College, Washington University, the University of Washington, the University of Wisconsin have developed a more effective brain-control interface device, using a sheet of closely spaced electrodes placed over the brain. In recent experiments, five patients learned to control a computer cursor in two dimensions on a computer signals in less than 30 minutes, a performance similar to those achieved using electrodes implanted directly into the screen using their brain.

[ Original article published in newscientist.com ]

Machines to match man by 2029

Machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence by 2029, a leading US inventor has predicted.

Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see tiny robots implanted in people's brains to make them more intelligent said engineer Ray Kurzweil. Mr Kurzweil is one of 18 influential thinkers chosen to identify the great technological challenges facing humanity in the 21st century by the US National Academy of Engineering.

[ more ]

NIH Curriculum Supplement Series

National Institute of Health (NIH) released a new public ebook that contains information about scientific perspective to common concepts such brain, sleep, alcohol, cancer, etc. Recommended, available here.

Other public ebooks on NCBI bookshelf are available for free of charge here.

Designing Interactions

A book by Bill Moggridge (Author)
www.designinginteractions.com

In Designing Interactions, award-winning designer Bill Moggridge introduces us to forty influential designers who have shaped our interaction with technology.

About the Author
Award-winning designer Bill Moggridge is a founder of IDEO, one of the most successful design firms in the world and one of the first to integrate the design of software and hardware into the practice of industrial design. He has been Visiting Professor in Interaction Design at the Royal College of Art in London, Lecturer in Design at the London Business School, member of the Steering Committee for the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy, and is currently Consulting Associate Professor in the Joint Program in Design at Stanford University.

Handheld printing without Ink

Thermal-printing technology developed at Polaroid spinoff Zink Imaging was demonstrated earlier this year. [ see here ] This technology is now built into a pocket-sized printer that can fit into a hand (see pictures left)

Polaroid, the company famous for cameras that print instant pictures, unveiled an ultrasmall photo printer at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. Along with being mobile, it would also dispense with the inconvenience of ink cartridges that unexpectedly begin to run out of ink, and which have to be replaced. Polaroid, says that the printers will be available to consumers by the summer, and they will be priced at less than $150.