[antistigma]

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Thu, 23 May 2013 20:43:21 -0400

No Fear: Memory Adjustment Pills Get Pentagon Push | Danger Room | Wired.com

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:13:33 -0400

No Fear: Memory Adjustment Pills Get Pentagon Push | Danger Room | Wired.com: Intent on solving the...

wet-chrome: PROSTHETIC ARM by Kaylene Kau Tentacle arm? Yes,...

Thu, 23 May 2013 04:01:35 -0400

wet-chrome:

PROSTHETIC ARM by Kaylene Kau

Tentacle arm? Yes, please.

neurosciencestuff: Brain implants: Restoring memory with a...

Tue, 14 May 2013 03:34:17 -0400

neurosciencestuff:

Brain implants: Restoring memory with a microchip

William Gibson’s popular science fiction tale “Johnny Mnemonic” foresaw sensitive information being carried by microchips in the brain by 2021. A team of American neuroscientists could be making this fantasy world a reality.

Their motivation is different but the outcome would be somewhat similar. Hailed as one of 2013’s top ten technological breakthroughs by MIT, the work by the University of Southern California, North Carolina’s Wake Forest University and other partners has actually spanned a decade.

But the U.S.-wide team now thinks that it will see a memory device being implanted in a small number of human volunteers within two years and available to patients in five to 10 years. They can’t quite contain their excitement.

“I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime,” said Ted Berger, professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “I might not benefit from it myself but my kids will.”

Rob Hampson, associate professor of physiology and pharmacology at Wake Forest University, agrees. “We keep pushing forward, every time I put an estimate on it, it gets shorter and shorter.”

The scientists — who bring varied skills to the table, including mathematical modeling and psychiatry — believe they have cracked how long-term memories are made, stored and retrieved and how to replicate this process in brains that are damaged, particularly by stroke or localized injury.

Berger said they record a memory being made, in an undamaged area of the brain, then use that data to predict what a damaged area “downstream” should be doing. Electrodes are then used to stimulate the damaged area to replicate the action of the undamaged cells.

They concentrate on the hippocampus — part of the cerebral cortex which sits deep in the brain — where short-term memories become long-term ones. Berger has looked at how electrical signals travel through neurons there to form those long-term memories and has used his expertise in mathematical modeling to mimic these movements using electronics.

Hampson, whose university has done much of the animal studies, adds: “We support and reinforce the signal in the hippocampus but we are moving forward with the idea that if you can study enough of the inputs and outputs to replace the function of the hippocampus, you can bypass the hippocampus.”

The team’s experiments on rats and monkeys have shown that certain brain functions can be replaced with signals via electrodes. You would think that the work of then creating an implant for people and getting such a thing approved would be a Herculean task, but think again.

For 15 years, people have been having brain implants to provide deep brain stimulation to treat epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease — a reported 80,000 people have now had such devices placed in their brains. So many of the hurdles have already been overcome — particularly the “yuck factor” and the fear factor.

“It’s now commonly accepted that humans will have electrodes put in them — it’s done for epilepsy, deep brain stimulation, (that has made it) easier for investigative research, it’s much more acceptable now than five to 10 years ago,” Hampson says.

Much of the work that remains now is in shrinking down the electronics.

“Right now it’s not a device, it’s a fair amount of equipment,”Hampson says. “We’re probably looking at devices in the five to 10 year range for human patients.”

The ultimate goal in memory research would be to treat Alzheimer’s Disease but unlike in stroke or localized brain injury, Alzheimer’s tends to affect many parts of the brain, especially in its later stages, making these implants a less likely option any time soon.

Berger foresees a future, however, where drugs and implants could be used together to treat early dementia. Drugs could be used to enhance the action of cells that surround the most damaged areas, and the team’s memory implant could be used to replace a lot of the lost cells in the center of the damaged area. “I think the best strategy is going to involve both drugs and devices,” he says.

Unfortunately, the team found that its method can’t help patients with advanced dementia.

“When looking at a patient with mild memory loss, there’s probably enough residual signal to work with, but not when there’s significant memory loss,” Hampson said.

Constantine Lyketsos, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at John Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore which is trialing a deep brain stimulator implant for Alzheimer’s patients was a little skeptical of the other team’s claims.

“The brain has a lot of redundancy, it can function pretty well if loses one or two parts. But memory involves circuits diffusely dispersed throughout the brain so it’s hard to envision.” However, he added that it was more likely to be successful in helping victims of stroke or localized brain injury as indeed its makers are aiming to do.

The UK’s Alzheimer’s Society is cautiously optimistic.

“Finding ways to combat symptoms caused by changes in the brain is an ongoing battle for researchers. An implant like this one is an interesting avenue to explore,” said Doug Brown, director of research and development.

Hampson says the team’s breakthrough is “like the difference between a cane, to help you walk, and a prosthetic limb — it’s two different approaches.”

It will still take time for many people to accept their findings and their claims, he says, but they don’t expect to have a shortage of volunteers stepping forward to try their implant — the project is partly funded by the U.S. military which is looking for help with battlefield injuries.

There are U.S. soldiers coming back from operations with brain trauma and a neurologist at DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is asking “what can you do for my boys?” Hampson says.

“That’s what it’s all about.”

thepeoplesrecord: Real, complete, fire-able 3D printed...

Thu, 09 May 2013 13:50:13 -0400

thepeoplesrecord:

Real, complete, fire-able 3D printed ‘liberator’ gun downloaded tens of thousands of times
May 9, 2013

If gun control advocates hoped to prevent blueprints for the world’s first fully 3D-printable gun from spreading online, that horse has now left the barn about a hundred thousand times.

That’s the number of downloads of the 3D-printable file for the so-called “Liberator” gun that the high-tech gunsmithing group Defense Distributed has seen in just the last two days, a member of the group tells me. The gun’s CAD files have been ten times more popular than any component the group has previously made available, parts that have included the body of an AR-15 and the magazine for an AK-47.”This has definitely been our most well-received download,” says Haroon Khalid, a developer working with Defense Distributed. “I don’t think any of us predicted it would be this much.”

The controversial gun-printing group is hosting those files, which include everything from the gun’s trigger to its body to its barrel, on a service that has attracted some controversy of its own: Kim Dotcom’s Mega storage site. Although the blueprint is only publicly visible on Defense Distributed’s own website Defcad.org, users who click on it are prompted to download the collection of CAD files from Mega.co.nz, which advertises that it encrypts all users’ information and has a reputation for resisting government surveillance.

Cody Wilson, Defense Distributed’s 25-year-old founder, says that the group chose to use Mega mostly because it was fast and free. But he also says he feels a degree of common cause with Kim Dotcom, the ex-hacker chief executive of Mega who has become a vocal critic of the U.S. government after being indicted for copyright infringement and racketeering in early 2012. “We’re sympathetic to Kim Dotcom,” says Wilson. “There are plenty of services we could have used, but we chose this one. He’s down for the struggle.”

The most downloads of Defense Distributed’s “Liberator,” surprisingly, haven’t come from the U.S., but from Spain, according to Khalid’s count. The U.S. is second, ahead of Brazil, Germany, and the U.K., he says, although he wasn’t able to provide absolute download numbers for each country.

Update: Although Spain was initially outpacing the U.S. in downloads, it seems more Americans have now downloaded the file.

The gun’s blueprint, of course, may have also already spread far wider than Defense Distributed can measure. It’s also been uploaded to the filesharing site the Pirate Bay, where it’s quickly become one of the most popular files in the site’s 3D-printing category. “This is the first in what will become an avalanche of undetectable, untraceable, easy-to-manufacture weapons that will turn the tables on evil-doers the world over,” writes one user with the name DakotaSmith on the site. “Share and enjoy.”

It’s worth noting that only a fraction of those who download the printable gun file will ever try to actually create one. Defense Distributed used an $8,000 second-hand Stratasys Dimension SST to print their prototype, a 3D printer that the vast majority of its fans won’t have access to.

Nonetheless the “Liberator,” which I first revealed last Friday and then witnessed being test-fired over the weekend, has caused an enormous stir online. Defense Distributed says that it received 540,000 users to its website in the two days since its printable gun was released, and its video revealing the gun has attracted 2.8 million views on YouTube.

The project has also already immediately inspired a legal backlash. New York congressmen Steve Israel and Chuck Schumer have both called for the renewal of the Undetectable Firearms Act to ban any gun that can’t be spotted with a metal detector.

But Defense Distributed’s real goal hasn’t been to create an undetectable gun so much as an uncensorable, digital one. As the group’s founder radical libertarian founder Cody Wilson sees it, firearms can be made into a printable file that blurs the line between gun control and information censorship, blending the First Amendent and the Second and demonstrating how technology can render the government irrelevant.

“Call me crazy, but I see a world where contraband will pass underground through the data cables to be printed in our homes as the drones move overhead,” Wilson said when we first spoke in August of last year. “I see a kind of poetry there…I dream of this very weird future and I’d like to be a part of it.”

Source (Forbes)

Scary. We reported this about a year ago when they only had a few parts of the gun available to print. It got reblogs with comments like ‘yah but they won’t develop the technology in our lifetime to print the whole gun.’ Welp, as I said then and I say now, this is not some distant-future technology. It is here now, available to people who have an expensive 3D Printer, but in the next few years, 3D printers will become cheaper and cheaper and eventually, way cheaper. So I think this is important & I think we should be paying attention to this.

futurescope: Government Lab Reveals It Has Operated Quantum...

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:30:24 -0400

futurescope:

Government Lab Reveals It Has Operated Quantum Internet For Over Two Years

From Technology Review:

A quantum internet capable of sending perfectly secure messages has been running at Los Alamos National Labs for the last two and a half years, say researchers. […] Today, Richard Hughes and pals at Los Alamos National Labs in New Mexico reveal an alternative quantum internet, which they say they’ve been running for two and half years. Their approach is to create a quantum network based around a hub and spoke-type network. All messages get routed from any point in the network to another via this central hub.

[read more @techreview] [via @nraford] [paper] [picture by Hughes et al.]

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Mon, 06 May 2013 21:29:53 -0400

gothscreenshots: You are not connected

Sun, 05 May 2013 08:37:30 -0400

gothscreenshots:

You are not connected

thisistheverge: Shapeshifters: phones of the future could morph...

Sat, 04 May 2013 05:39:39 -0400

thisistheverge:

Shapeshifters: phones of the future could morph on demand

Scientists in Europe have developed prototype devices that could drastically change the way we interact with our smartphones and tablets. The six working prototypes, known as “Morphees,” are thin, electronic displays capable of automatically changing shape to perform certain functions. Researchers say that if brought to market, the devices could usher in a new era in mobile computing, breaking down the physical barriers that have traditionally defined smartphones, tablets, and gaming consoles.

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Sat, 04 May 2013 05:30:17 -0400

"I’d like to think that Tumblr will solve their obvious problems before they crash down like..."

Fri, 03 May 2013 06:46:32 -0400

“I’d like to think that Tumblr will solve their obvious problems before they crash down like...

knowledgethroughscience: Scientists at Princeton University...

Fri, 03 May 2013 06:45:29 -0400

knowledgethroughscience:

Scientists at Princeton University used 3-D printing to create a functional ear that can “hear” radio frequencies far beyond the range of normal human capability.

“The design and implementation of bionic organs and devices that enhance human capabilities, known as cybernetics, has been an area of increasing scientific interest,” the researchers wrote in the article which appears in the scholarly journal Nano Letters. “This field has the potential to generate customized replacement parts for the human body, or even create organs containing capabilities beyond what human biology ordinarily provides.”

The finished ear consists of a coiled antenna inside a cartilage structure. Two wires lead from the base of the ear and wind around a helical “cochlea” — the part of the ear that senses sound — which can connect to electrodes. The ear in principle could be used to restore or enhance human hearing. Electrical signals produced by the ear could be connected to a patient’s nerve endings, similar to a hearing aid.

artissimo: Spectrum 8: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art

Thu, 02 May 2013 07:00:30 -0400

artissimo:

Spectrum 8: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art

alexob: Samsung Demos a Tablet Controlled by Your...

Thu, 02 May 2013 06:59:55 -0400

alexob:

Samsung Demos a Tablet Controlled by Your Brain  

An easy-to-use EEG cap could expand the number of ways to interact with your mobile devices.

Why it matters.

A brain-controlled mobile device could give paralyzed people more ways to interact with the world while also improving functionality for all of us.

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Wed, 01 May 2013 21:24:10 -0400

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Wed, 01 May 2013 08:27:21 -0400

fragilespace: The Earth’s Tarry Dreams of Insurrection Against...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 22:16:19 -0400

fragilespace:

The Earth’s Tarry Dreams of Insurrection Against the Sun, 2010

m1k3y: A robot distributes promotional literature calling for a...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:15:58 -0400

m1k3y:

A robot distributes promotional literature calling for a ban on fully autonomous weapons in Parliament Square in London. The ‘Campaign to Stop Killer Robots’ is calling for a pre-emptive ban on lethal robot weapons that could attack targets without any human intervention

China's internet: A giant cage (via The Economist)

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:08:13 -0400

China's internet: A giant cage (via The Economist): futuresagency: The fastest growth in internet...

cryptogon.com » ‘After Boston, Lawmakers See Case for Use of Drones to Kill Americans’

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:04:14 -0400

cryptogon.com » ‘After Boston, Lawmakers See Case for Use of Drones to Kill Americans’:...