Mind-controlled prosthetics to help amputees

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ROBOTIC limbs controlled solely by the mind could be available to paralysed people within a year.

Monkeys are being trained to control what might be the world’s most sophisticated and human-like robot arm. But they never touch the prosthetic limb or fiddle with a remote control: they guide it with their thoughts alone. If trials are successful, in a few months from now people with spinal cord injuries could learn to do the same.

In 2008, Andrew Schwartz of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania published a landmark paper describing how two rhesus macaques learned to feed themselves marshmallows and fruit using a crude robotic limb controlled by electrodes implanted in their brains (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature06996). No brain-controlled prosthetic limb had ever carried out a more complex real-world task. Still, Schwartz envisioned a more elegant and nimble device that paralysed people could use – something much closer to a human hand.

Enter the Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL), a bionic limb that closely approximates the form and agility of a human arm and hand. Born from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics programme, and designed by Michael McLoughlin’s team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, the MPL is made from a combination of lightweight carbon fibre and high-strength alloys. It has 22 degrees of freedom, compared with the human arm’s 30, and can grasp precisely and firmly without crushing fragile objects. The wrist and elbow rotate with ease and, like an average human limb, it weighs just under 4.5 kilograms.

“I would say it’s very close to human dexterity,” says McLoughlin. “It can’t do absolutely everything – it can’t cup the palm, for example – but it can control all fingers individually. I don’t think there is another limb that approaches it.” ..

via Mind-controlled prosthetics to help amputees – health – 28 April 2011 – New Scientist.

>Science Fiction Timeline of Inventions (Listed by Publication Date)

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Most of these items are linked to information about similar real-life inventions and inventors; click on an invention to learn more about it.

Date	Device Name (Novel Author)
1726	Laputa – a floating island (from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift)
1726	Bio-Energy – produce electricity from organic material (from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift)
1726	Knowledge Engine – machine-made expertise (from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift)
1726	Geometric Modeling – eighteenth century NURBS (from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift)
1828	Barrels of Air (from The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Henry Loudon)
1828	Steam-Propelled Moving Houses (from The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Henry Loudon)
1828	Stage Balloon (from The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Henry Loudon)
1828	Mail-Post Letter-Ball (from The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Henry Loudon)
1866	Paper Steel (from Robur-the-Conqueror by Jules Verne)
1867	Weightlessness – true science fiction discovery (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1867	Retro-Rockets – Verne invented them! (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1867	Light Pressure Propulsion – first use of this idea (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1867	Water-Springs (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1867	Spashdown – the original idea (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1867	Launching Facility – in Florida (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1867	Projectile-Vehicle – Verne’s spacecraft (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1867	Free Return Trajectory – first mention (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1867	Communicate with Extraterrestrials – first use of concept (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1867	Columbiad – 900 foot cannon (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1869	Flywheel Launcher (from The Brick Moon by Edward Everett Hale)
1875	Nautilus – Captain Nemo’s ride (from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne)
1875	Diving Apparatus – scuba diving in the 19th century (from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne)
1875	Electrify the Rail – repel boarders! (from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne)
1875	Leyden Ball – grandfather of the taser (from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne)
1875	Undersea Mining (from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne)

…

via Science Fiction Timeline of Inventions (Listed by Publication Date).

Many more at the link.

>Science Fiction Timeline of Inventions (Listed by Publication Date)

>Most of these items are linked to information about similar real-life inventions and inventors; click on an invention to learn more about it.

Date

Device Name (Novel Author)

1726

Laputa – a floating island (from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift)

1726

Bio-Energy – produce electricity from organic material (from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift)

1726

Knowledge Engine – machine-made expertise (from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift)

1726

Geometric Modeling – eighteenth century NURBS (from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift)

1828

Barrels of Air (from The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Henry Loudon)

1828

Steam-Propelled Moving Houses (from The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Henry Loudon)

1828

Stage Balloon (from The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Henry Loudon)

1828

Mail-Post Letter-Ball (from The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Henry Loudon)

1866

Paper Steel (from Robur-the-Conqueror by Jules Verne)

1867

Weightlessness – true science fiction discovery (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)

1867

Retro-Rockets – Verne invented them! (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)

1867

Light Pressure Propulsion – first use of this idea (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)

1867

Water-Springs (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)

1867

Spashdown – the original idea (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)

1867

Launching Facility – in Florida (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)

1867

Projectile-Vehicle – Verne’s spacecraft (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)

1867

Free Return Trajectory – first mention (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)

1867

Communicate with Extraterrestrials – first use of concept (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)

1867

Columbiad – 900 foot cannon (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)

1869

Flywheel Launcher (from The Brick Moon by Edward Everett Hale)

1875

Nautilus – Captain Nemo’s ride (from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne)

1875

Diving Apparatus – scuba diving in the 19th century (from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne)

1875

Electrify the Rail – repel boarders! (from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne)

1875

Leyden Ball – grandfather of the taser (from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne)

1875

Undersea Mining (from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne)

…

via Science Fiction Timeline of Inventions (Listed by Publication Date).
Many more at the link.

>Science Fiction Timeline of Inventions (Listed by Publication Date)

>

Most of these items are linked to information about similar real-life inventions and inventors; click on an invention to learn more about it.

Date	Device Name (Novel Author)
1726	Laputa – a floating island (from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift)
1726	Bio-Energy – produce electricity from organic material (from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift)
1726	Knowledge Engine – machine-made expertise (from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift)
1726	Geometric Modeling – eighteenth century NURBS (from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift)
1828	Barrels of Air (from The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Henry Loudon)
1828	Steam-Propelled Moving Houses (from The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Henry Loudon)
1828	Stage Balloon (from The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Henry Loudon)
1828	Mail-Post Letter-Ball (from The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Henry Loudon)
1866	Paper Steel (from Robur-the-Conqueror by Jules Verne)
1867	Weightlessness – true science fiction discovery (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1867	Retro-Rockets – Verne invented them! (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1867	Light Pressure Propulsion – first use of this idea (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1867	Water-Springs (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1867	Spashdown – the original idea (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1867	Launching Facility – in Florida (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1867	Projectile-Vehicle – Verne’s spacecraft (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1867	Free Return Trajectory – first mention (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1867	Communicate with Extraterrestrials – first use of concept (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1867	Columbiad – 900 foot cannon (from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne)
1869	Flywheel Launcher (from The Brick Moon by Edward Everett Hale)
1875	Nautilus – Captain Nemo’s ride (from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne)
1875	Diving Apparatus – scuba diving in the 19th century (from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne)
1875	Electrify the Rail – repel boarders! (from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne)
1875	Leyden Ball – grandfather of the taser (from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne)
1875	Undersea Mining (from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne)

…

via Science Fiction Timeline of Inventions (Listed by Publication Date).

Many more at the link.

>Factory Uses Robots To Grow Human Skin

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Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology in Germany oversee a skin-making process controlled by robots. They currently produce 5,000 penny-sized disks of tissue every month, at around $72 per unit. It is hoped that in the future there will be many similar factories, mass-producing skin at a low cost for use in clinical testing and transplants in humans.

With robots and computers controlling the process, this maintains a sterile and climate-controlled environment for the skin to be developed, reducing the risk of contamination. Successfully engineered tissue for humans has been achieved but it is very costly and labor-intensive. Using robots as automated manufacturers would reduce both the cost and the manpower needed, enabling the efficient production of tissue, cartilage and even entire organs.

via Factory Uses Robots To Grow Human Skin – PSFK.

>Amazon seller lists book at $23,698,655.93 — plus shipping

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Lots of normal people would pay $23 for a book. But $23.7 million plus $3.99 shipping for a scientific book about flies!? This unthinkable sticker price for “The Making of a Fly” on Amazon.com was spotted on April 18 by Michael Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and blogger. The market-blind book listing was not the result of uncontrollable demand for Peter Lawrence’s “classic work in developmental biology,” Eisen writes. Instead, it appears it was sparked by a robot price war. “What’s fascinating about all this is both the seemingly endless possibilities for both chaos and mischief,” writes Eisen, who works at the University of California at Berkeley and blogs at a site called “it is NOT junk.” “It seems impossible that we stumbled onto the only example of this kind of upward pricing spiral. “Eisen watched the robot price war from April 8 to 18 and calculated that two booksellers were automatically adjusting their prices against each other. One equation kept setting the price of the first book at 1.27059 times the price of the second book, according to Eisen’s analysis, which is posted in detail on his blog. The other equation automatically set its price at 0.9983 times the price of the other book. So the prices of the two books escalated in tandem into the millions, with the second book always selling for slightly less than the first. Not that that matters much when you’re selling a book about flies for millions of dollars. The incident highlights a little-known fact about e-commerce sites such as Amazon: Often, people don’t create and update prices; computer algorithms do. Individual booksellers on Amazon and other sites pay third-party companies for algorithm services that automatically update prices. Some of these computer programs purportedly work very well, getting sellers up to 60% more sales because they underbid the competition automatically and repeatedly.

via Amazon seller lists book at $23,698,655.93 — plus shipping – CNN.

>Development in fog harvesting process may make water available to the world’s poor

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In the arid Namib Desert on the west coast of Africa, one type of beetle has found a distinctive way of surviving. When the morning fog rolls in, the Stenocara gracilipes species, also known as the Namib Beetle, collects water droplets on its bumpy back, then lets the moisture roll down into its mouth, allowing it to drink in an area devoid of flowing water.

What nature has developed, Shreerang Chhatre wants to refine, to help the world’s poor. Chhatre is an engineer and aspiring entrepreneur at MIT who works on fog harvesting, the deployment of devices that, like the beetle, attract water droplets and corral the runoff. This way, poor villagers could collect clean water near their homes, instead of spending hours carrying water from distant wells or streams. In pursuing the technical and financial sides of his project, Chhatre is simultaneously a doctoral candidate in chemical engineering at MIT; an MBA student at the MIT Sloan School of Management; and a fellow at MIT’s Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship.

Access to water is a pressing global issue: the World Health Organization and UNICEF estimate that nearly 900 million people worldwide live without safe drinking water. The burden of finding and transporting that water falls heavily on women and children. “As a middle-class person, I think it’s terrible that the poor have to spend hours a day walking just to obtain a basic necessity,” Chhatre says.

A fog-harvesting device consists of a fence-like mesh panel, which attracts droplets, connected to receptacles into which water drips. Chhatre has co-authored published papers on the materials used in these devices, and believes he has improved their efficacy. “The technical component of my research is done,” Chhatre says. He is pursuing his work at MIT Sloan and the Legatum Center in order to develop a workable business plan for implementing fog-harvesting devices.

Interest in fog harvesting dates to the 1990s, and increased when new research on Stenocara gracilipes made a splash in 2001. A few technologists saw potential in the concept for people. One Canadian charitable organization, FogQuest, has tested projects in Chile and Guatemala.

Chhatre’s training as a chemical engineer has focused on the wettability of materials, their tendency to either absorb or repel liquids (think of a duck’s feathers, which repel water). …

One basic principle of a good fog-harvesting device is that it must have a combination of surfaces that attract and repel water. For instance, the shell of Stenocara gracilipes has bumps that attract water and troughs that repel it; this way, drops collects on the bumps, then run off through the troughs without being absorbed, so that the water reaches the beetle’s mouth.

To build fog-harvesting devices that work on a human scale, Chhatre says, “The idea is to use the design principles we developed and extend them to this problem.”

To build larger fog harvesters, researchers generally use mesh, rather than a solid surface like a beetle’s shell, because a completely impermeable object creates wind currents that will drag water droplets away from it. In this sense, the beetle’s physiology is an inspiration for human fog harvesting, not a template. “We tried to replicate what the beetle has, but found this kind of open permeable surface is better,” Chhatre says. “The beetle only needs to drink a few micro-liters of water. We want to capture as large a quantity as possible.” …

via Development in fog harvesting process may make water available to the world’s poor.

>Apple’s iPhones and Google’s Androids Send Cellphone Location

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Apple Inc.’s iPhones and Google Inc.’s Android smartphones regularly transmit their locations back to Apple and Google, respectively, according to data and documents analyzed by The Wall Street Journal—intensifying concerns over privacy and the widening trade in personal data.

Google and Apple are gathering location information as part of their race to build massive databases capable of pinpointing people’s locations via their cellphones. These databases could help them tap the $2.9 billion market for location-based services—expected to rise to $8.3 billion in 2014, according to research firm Gartner Inc.

In the case of Google, according to new research by security analyst Samy Kamkar, an HTC Android phone collected its location every few seconds and transmitted the data to Google at least several times an hour. It also transmitted the name, location and signal strength of any nearby Wi-Fi networks, as well as a unique phone identifier.

Google declined to comment on the findings.

Until last year, Google was collecting similar Wi-Fi data with its fleet of StreetView cars that map and photograph streets world-wide. The company shut down its StreetView Wi-Fi collection last year after it inadvertently collected e-mail addresses, passwords and other personal information from Wi-Fi networks. The data that Mr. Kamkar observed being transmitted on Android phones didn’t include such personal information.

Apple, meanwhile, says it “intermittently” collects location data, including GPS coordinates, of many iPhone users and nearby Wi-Fi networks and transmits that data to itself every 12 hours, according to a letter the company sent to U.S. Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) last year. Apple didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The Google and Apple developments follow the Journal’s findings last year that some of the most popular smartphone apps use location data and other personal information even more aggressively than this—in some cases sharing it with third-party companies without the user’s consent or knowledge.

Apple this week separately has come under fire after researchers found that iPhones store unencrypted databases containing location information sometimes stretching back several months. …

Unlike many cell-phone-enabled violations of your privacy, whose purpose is mainly to enrich the app maker, the storage of location data on iPhones and the gathering of location data by Android phones at least provide benefits to users and are under user control.

The database works behind the scenes mainly to improve wireless data service, traffic maps and other basic functions of a smartphone.

Location data isn’t even gathered if location services are turned off.

Yes, the storage of unencrypted location data on your phone is a potential privacy breach waiting to happen. But there’s a whole list of privacy violations taking place through your phone every day.

The hard reality is that there’s only one way to guarantee privacy with a cell phone: Remove the battery.

via Apple’s iPhones and Google’s Androids Send Cellphone Location – WSJ.com.

>US drone raid ‘kills 25’ in Pakistan

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At least 25 people have been killed in a US drone strike in the troubled Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan, officials told the BBC.

Missiles were fired on a large compound in the town of Spinwam, but five women and four children in a nearby house were also killed.

The area is a haven for al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.

Meanwhile, at least 13 soldiers died when hundreds of insurgents attacked a checkpoint near the Afghan border.

Pakistani security officials told the BBC that Afghan militants had crossed the border and stormed the army post in the Lower Dir area.

Security forces temporarily abandoned the post but now, residents say, they are back in control and have placed the entire area under curfew.

Pakistani-US tensions

Pakistani officials say four missiles were fired on a large compound occupied by supporters of local militant commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur, in Spinwam, 40km (25 miles) north-east of the tribal region’s main town of Miranshah.

Several people were also wounded in Friday’s attack, a local intelligence official was quoted as telling AFP news agency.

The US does not routinely confirm it conducts drone operations in Pakistan.

But analysts say only American forces have the capacity to deploy such aircraft. US drone attacks have escalated in the region since President Barack Obama took office. More than 100 raids were reported last year. …

via BBC News – Pakistan: US drone raid ‘kills 25’ in N Waziristan.

>Google fined $5m over Linux patent row

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A judgement by a Texas jury against Google could have major implications for the search giant and the open source world said experts.

The internet titan was found guilty of infringing a patent related to the Linux kernel and fined $5m (£3.2m).

The software is used by Google for its server platforms and could also extend to its Android mobile platform.

The kernel is at the core of the open-source operating system meaning this verdict could be far-reaching.

The case resulted in a victory for a firm called Bedrock Computer Technologies which has also sued Yahoo, MySpace, Amazon, PayPal, Match.com and AOL.

“The amount of the fine is not what makes this an important issue,” intellectual property activist Florian Mueller told BBC News.

“This is a modest amount considering Google is probably the largest scale Linux user in the world.

“The implication here is really that there is a huge number of Linux users who will be required to pay royalties if this patent holder knocks on their doors in the US. This is definitely a major impediment to the growth of Linux and makes companies, including Google, that rely on open source code particularly vulnerable to patent threats.”

That is also the view of other industry watchers who expect a flood of lawsuits against companies who rely on open source code.

“Those looking to cash in on buried patents need only spend time poring over code and looking for infringements,” said Christopher Dawson of technology blog ZDNet.

“It costs a lot less than $5m to hire a team of programmers in India to do code review. This, I’m afraid, is just the beginning and stands to do a fair amount of harm to industry momentum and to the private companies that provide vast incentive for the advancement of open source software.”

But Google has said it will continue to defend against such attacks like this one on the open source community.

“The recent explosion in patent litigation is turning the world’s information highway into a toll road, forcing companies to spend millions and millions of dollars defending old, questionable patent claims and wasting resources that would be much better spent investing in new technologies for users and creating jobs,” said Google. …

via BBC News – Google fined $5m over Linux patent row.