Jonathan Viventi Builds Devices That Decode Thoughts Existing brain implants require individual electrodes to be wired to an external device for data processing.
Viventi s arrays contain transistors that enable the signals to be processed locally yet they're as thin and flexible as a sheet of cellophane conforming to the contours of the brain.
As a result the number of electrodes can be increased by an order of magnitude. We can actually sample with extremely high resolution across a virtually unlimited area of the brain Viventi says.
In animal studies this enabled reseachers to recognize the subtle brain signals that seem to give rise to seizures#a capability#he hopes doctors can use to better understand epilepsy in humans.
These arrays have tremendous potential to improve the quality of life for people with many kinds of disabilities.
Technology can solve many medical problems Viventi says. We just have to plug away and apply what we already know.#
#Navy Demonstrates Swarm Of Armed Robot Boats Call them sea drones dronaughts or roboats the Navy demonstrated a swarm of remotely-controlled boats on the James river In virginia this August.
As if animated by the same mind the13 patrol boats all moved in unison their crewless decks painting a picture of
what warfare may soon become. The project by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) wants to save both lives
and together they share information from their sensors. Each boat knows its own surrounding environment
and the location of other vessels and it shares this situation awareness with the other ships in the swarm.
On the phone with media Read Admiral Matthew L. Klunder and ONR program manager Robert Brizzolara confirmed that
while the robot ships had the ability to move on their own there is always a human in the loop before the robot boats fire their weapons.
and ONR said they were armed with a variety of weapons--from. 50 caliber machine guns to high-powered microwave weapons.
Multiple times during the media call Klunder and Brizzolara mentioned Al qaeda s suicide bombing attack on the destroyer USS Cole in October 2000.
As the Cole refueled at a Yemeni port a small foreign craft approached the side of the destroyer
Klunder didn't specify how the robotic patrol boats would have saved the Cole but it's possible that an unmanned robot boat could intercept a vessel full of suicide bombers.
Then the robot could either disable the attacking vehicle or cause any explosions to detonate prematurely with no American lives lost.
Protecting the fleet is the first and most obvious use of CARACAS but autonomy and swarming have the potential for so much more than just intercepting small boats.
while people might not accept CARACAS on a destroyer soon the technology would work for merchant vessels and larger ships.
If the trend on the sea is moving away from crew (as seen in both military
First patrol boats then the high seas s
#The Quest To Harness Wind energy At 2, 000 Feet To be more precise it's a stabilizing fin part of a tube-shaped robotic airship designed to tap the power of high-altitude winds.
The blade tips of today's tallest conventional wind turbine installed at a test center in Denmark this year stretch to 720 feet.
The fully autonomous lighter-than-air BAT (short for buoyant airborne turbine) will climb as high as 2000 feet where winds blow stronger and steadier.
A The body or shroud of Altaeros's Buoyant Airborne Turbine (BAT) is kept aloft by 1000 cubic meters of helium.
Four air-filled stabilizing fins passively steer the BAT into incoming gusts. The company worked with airship
and spacesuit pioneer ILC Dover to develop its proprietary UV-and weather-resistant fabric. B The first commercial BAT will house a 30-kilowatt turbine
which could power roughly a dozen homes. A larger version will fly a 200-kilowatt turbine.
The BAT can also carry radio and cellular antennae or Wireless internet gear to create or extend voice and data networks.
C Three double-braided polymer tethers prevent the airship from drifting away. One contains copper conductors that transmit power collected as high as 2000 feet down to a battery or the grid.
D The ground station responding to sensor data from the BAT helps the craft hunt for optimal wind conditions around 30 mph.
It can adjust the BAT's altitude using three winches and rotates as the craft faces shifting air currents.
The station can also reel the BAT all the way in if wind speed exceeds 75 mph.
There is more than enough energy in high-altitude winds to power all of civilization says Ken Caldeira a Stanford university climate scientist who co-authored a 2012 study that ballparked the potential at 1800 terawatts--more than four times the estimate near the surface.
The question is whether technologies can be created that can reliably and affordably extract it. Altaeros Energies the company behind that BAT is poised to prove that it's already done so.
Provided of course the vehicle hasn't sprung a leak. We've been meaning to do this for a while says Adam Rein the company's lead director and cofounder over the buzz of the air compressor.
The fin had been pulled from storage where it had been sitting deflated since test flights several months before.
or two pack down and move to a new site or a new customer. While typical wind turbines of similar scale require a large crew
And instead of pouring concrete foundations and erecting a multistory tower a few people with a truck can inflate the airship on site
communities around the world too remote to access an electrical grid. Often they must rely on diesel generators--one of the least-efficient power sources
--because renewable energy systems are not economically feasible. In the Arctic for example there isn't enough sunlight to justify solar power for months at a time
Many sites in Alaska fit this description and so the Alaska Energy Authority awarded Altaeros a $740000 grant to demonstrate its technology.
The company plans to start flying its first commercial-scale BAT a 30-kilowatt system that could reduce diesel consumption by 11000 gallons annually near Fairbanks next year.
Altaeros is also in talks with potential customers in Brazil and India where listless ground winds scuttle conventional turbines.
or 200 kilowatts enough to compete in earnest with the generators that support commercial operations such as mines and construction sites.
In fact Altaeros sees industrial sites as opportunities. Why install permanent wind or solar generation when you'll only be given in a location for a year or two?
and building their first balsa-wood prototype high-altitude wind energy was still largely unknown. Altaeros has grown now to a 10-person operation
The most high-profile is Google which last year acquired California-based Makani Power and folded it into the Google X family of moonshot projects.
Whereas Makani and others aim to develop utility-scale turbines capable of powering hundreds to thousands of homes Altaeros plans to sell modest units that fill an immediate niche.
That's not to say that the Altaeros BAT is anything less than a sophisticated robotic system.
It can also respond automatically to changing weather conditions dodging storms that wear down ground-based systems and lead to costly maintenance or replacement.
Eventually Altaeros also hopes to produce a utility-scale turbine--one tailored for offshore power.
A megawatt-class BAT anchored 10 miles off the coast would need significantly smaller foundations than traditional offshore wind systems
whose towers can overturn without substantial reinforcement. It solves a lot of the headaches that offshore developers have today in putting these big turbines out there says Glass the company's CEO and CTO.
For now Altaeros is concentrating fully on the turbine in Somerville the one whose fin has finally finished inflating before me.
By now most of the employees have drifted back to their cubicles in the rear of Greentown Labs. The company helped found this incubator in 2011 for start-ups with a focus on green technology
and it's grown to include 45 of them--many of which have carved out space in the building's cavernous fabrication area.
Glass tells me to try lifting the fin which now bisects the room It takes one hand and almost no effort--a feat that's to his credit not mine.
It's light isn't it? he asks beaming with that special sort of pride only inventors can get away with.
Airfoilhow It Works: As the Airborne wind turbine makes giant vertical loops air spins four rotors which drive generators.
A tether sends the power to a ground station. Altitude: 400 to 1100 feetcommercial Scale:
Kitehow It Works: An arm extending from the ground station moves the kite in a figure-8 pattern.
Planehow It Works: The Powerplane glides on autopilot in a figure-8 pattern. As the plane climbs it pulls on its tether
which is connected to a ground-based generator. Altitude: 1000 to 2000 feetcommercial Scale: 2? 3 MWTIMEFRAME:
Kitehow It Works: Six to 24 kites pull generators around a track elevated 20 feet off the ground.
#Building Better Knees For The NBA The stress of repetitive jumping makes NBA players#particularly prone to painful even career-ending cartilage lesions.
For#decades microfracture surgery#pricking holes in the knee bone to stimulate tissue#regrowth#was the gold-standard repair.
So many new procedures coming out are superior says orthopedist Joshua Harris who studied#microfracture s impact on the NBA.
Here s how three of them work.##The Substitute that Deliversto fix a lesion doctors use osteochondral autograft transplant#surgery#(OATS)# to transfer cartilage from a non-load-bearing section of the patient s knee.#
#Riley Williams director of the Institute for Cartilage Repair at the Hospital for#Special Surgery says that unlike microfracture this method implants the collagen-rich hyaline necessary to continue competing at the highest level.#
#After undergoing OATS 75 percent of athletes under age 25 maintained the#same level of physical activity compared to 37 percent who had undergone microfracture.
The New Last Resortused to treat large injuries autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI) involves harvesting cartilage from the patient
The two-step process requires open surgery and up to a year of rehab which#dissuades some athletes.
It s difficult to convince people that an ACI is their best option says orthopedic surgeon Andreas Gomoll at Brigham and Women s Hospital even though it s a more durable fix than microfracture.
Because it s completed during a single surgery rehab time is minimal.##Similarly Neocart which is undergoing FDA trials implants collagen on a biodegradable scaffold.
Some studies have shown that non-athletes who#underwent Neocart recovered faster than microfracture patients.##Once#good cartilage products become available microfracture could become obsolete says Charles Roth of the Andrews Institute for Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine.
This article originally appeared in the October 2014 issue of Popular Science e
#Satellite data Maps Sea floor's Hidden Depths While many detailed maps exist of Earth s continents
what lies beneath our planet s waters has remained somewhat of a mystery. So far only 10 percent of the seafloor has been mapped at high resolution leaving researchers pretty eager to know what s going on in that other 90 percent.
Harnessing never-before-used satellite altimeter data from the European space agency s (ESA) Cryosat-2 and NASA s Jason-1 the scientists have created stunning maps of Earth s entire seafloor bringing to light mountains
The satellites orbit the earth and sends out thousands of radar pulses a second Sandwell a#geophysics professor#at Scripps.#
So we use that data to generate a topography of the ocean s surface. That topography highlights subtle variations and bumps in the oceans waters telling a lot about the surface underneath.
Along with providing the researchers with a better understanding of the waters uncharted depths Sandwell says these maps will be useful tools for the military
When you launch a missile from a submarine its launch characteristics are going to be perturbed by the gravity field Sandwell explains.
It s going to affect the initial takeoff angle of the missile so you have to correct for that.
The military and even some civilian people need this gravity model to do corrections to their underwater sensors.#
if climate change news couldn't get much worse along comes proof that it's affected one of the fundamental forces of nature:
As Eric Holthaus noted in Slate it's a very small decrease in gravity far from enough to send any penguins sea lions
The biggest implication is the new measurements confirm global warming is changing the Antarctic in fundamental ways Holthaus writes.
which has been taking high-resolution measurements of Earth's gravity for the past four years with those of the American-German orbiter GRACE which uses gravity data to measure changes in ice mass.
Climate change is having other measurable impacts on the southern continent. Data from the ESA's Cryosat satellite shows that West Antarctica's seasonal ice melt has sped up by a factor of three
since 2009 and that Antarctica has shrunk in volume by 233 cubic miles since 2011. It's true that the extent of Antarctic winter sea ice has grown over the past few years.
if this suggested that global warming is ebbing but no. As the ozone hole over the continent has shrunk it's letting in less UV radiation--which along with complex ocean circulation factors
is a much more likely reason that there's a bit more sea ice encircling the South pole e
From the sci-tech perspective important energy and conservation agreements were announced. Now the hard work of putting them into action begins for the pledgers and signers as well as those watchdogging that process.
It may not sound like much but intent must exist for action to ensue right? So if you're into environmental conservation--particularly curbing climate change--these agreements are worthy of some renewed optimism.
Here are some developments that blipped our tree-friendly radars: It's impressive: 32 national and 20 local or regional governments 40 companies 16 indigenous peoples groups and 49 nonprofits have pledged all cooperation to halve current rates of deforestation by 2020.
Beyond that the coalition has promised to restore hundreds of millions of acres of former forestlands
and to halt global forest destruction entirely by 2030. Razing and burning forests accounts for about 10 percent of present global carbon emissions or 3. 6 billion tons of CO2 a year.
Currently eight football fields worth of forest is degraded or destroyed every ten seconds according to the World Wildlife Fund.
So if it's successful the plan's impact on carbon dioxide emissions could equate to taking every single car On earth off the road.
In the U s. alone tailpipe emissions account for one-fifth of the nation's annual 5. 833 billion tons of greenhouse gas pollution according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
It would also mean an awful lot to the dozens if not hundreds of animal and plant species that call these forests home now
and will need room to move as temperatures rise in coming decades. Importantly many corporations and indigenous groups are partnering on this effort along with governments and conservationists.
But so far Greenpeace International is not among them stating that the plan is neither ambitious enough nor firmly grounded in tangible action.
Neither is the nation of Brazil home to roughly 60 percent of the Amazon rainforest
(although the government has stated it intends to cut deforestation roughly 25 percent by 2020). As part of the declaration Norway the U k. and Germany among others pledged $1 billion to developing countries such as Liberia and Peru for preserving forests.
As Popular Science reported live from the climate summit last week a coalition announced a new commitment to stop tropical forest and peatland loss related to the palm oil industry.
A widely used ingredient in processed foods palm oil has become a lucrative industry that is helping millions escape poverty.
But the enormous demand also drives rampant deforestation in Malaysia and Indonesia as growers clear land for palm oil plantations.
Major palm oil consumers Asian Agri Cargill Golden Agri-Resources Wilmar along with the Indonesian Chamber of commerce and Industry say they'll work with the government of Indonesia the world's largest palm oil producer to plant new palms
and conserve forests that have been cut down as a result of the palm oil industry. They have pledged also to stop buying palm oil from suppliers that destroy forests for the creation of plantations.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund announced that it is dropping all of its investments in fossil fuels-about $60. 2 million or 7 percent of the total $860 million endowment in favor of renewable energy.
While the greenbacks involved are a relatively small amount compared to the trillions invested in global oil coal
and natural gas the symbolic splash is huge: Heirs to a major oil fortune are pulling their money out of the industry.
The move will likely put wind under the wings of the fledging international fossil fuel divestment movement
which has been targeted largely at universities and cities so far. On September 23 several dozen heads of state including President Barack Obama came to the United nations for a one-day climate summit.
Scads of business and industry leaders scientists and nonprofit advocacy and civil society groups also took part.
It was the first time since 2009 that the U n. secretary general Ban Ki-moon had nestled a day full of climate change-centric programming into the yearly schedule of the U n. General assembly.
In 2009 official climate treaty talks were scheduled with the intention of producing a strong global climate treaty later that year--one featuring defined and legally binding commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions by the U s. and other industrialized nations.
But the Copenhagen talks were a flop leaving negotiators and climate activists flailing. Five years later many negative impacts of climate change have become even more visible worldwide as Popular Science often reports.
That fact helped get 300 to 400000 people (including many scientists and the people who love them) from around the country and the world onto the streets of New york city just a couple days before the climate summit on Sunday September 21.
They marched to demand climate change action and even the march's organizers claimed to be surprised by the heavy turnout.
Hundreds appeared again the next day September 22 for Flood Wall street using the tactics of the Occupy Wall street protests to keep media attention on climate change.
The science behind climate change is accepted well in most nations and the urgent need for action has been explained well to heads of state by the Intergovernmental panel on climate change (the U n.'s own climate science body).
So this latest unofficial climate summit was more about staking out positions on contentious issues ahead of official climate treaty negotiations that will occur over the next 14 months.
That process will culminate late next year in Paris at the 21st official U n. climate conference where a new international climate pact is supposed to be finalized.
Climate finance is one of the most challenging issues negotiators will try to resolve in the coming year.
Richer emerging economies such as China and Mexico may end up contributing as well. The fund will distribute money to developing nations to help those countries pay for low
-or no-carbon economic development projects such as expanding their energy generation capacity with renewables like sun and wind instead of fossil fuels.
These types of projects fall under the buzzword mitigation. The GCF is intended also to help pay for resilience-related projects such as strengthening infrastructure to withstand global warming impacts like sea level rise--efforts that are termed adaptation.
Donor nations have been dragging their heels when it comes to putting money into the pot however.
There have been disagreements over how the funds will be managed. Many questions remain: Should donor nations have any say over how the funds are allocated?
What share of curbing present-day pollution will be taken by the world's poorer nations as well as the richest?
and other events) underlines that India will be hard to bring around on cutting its greenhouse gas emissions which are now the world's third-largest t
#For Car Buyers, The Repo Man Is Just A Click Away The problem with cars is that they move.
For lenders interested in making sure loan repayments happen on schedule moving collateral can present an investment risk.
in order to track down repossessed vehicles. Now The New york times reports that some lenders are protecting their investments by making sure the cars are never really out of their control.
Thanks to GPS phone apps and ignition locking devices lenders can remotely shut down the car of someone who's behind on payments.
Note: This is a totally normal and not eerily dystopian thing to do. These devices mean lenders always know where the car is
and can alert the owners if they are behind on payments. Often the shutdown of a car leads to an immediate loan payment
if the borrower is capable though because these are typically subprime loans that isn t always the case.
Payment locks have spawned a whole cyberpunk culture built around hacking the devices. In turn lenders are installing fake devices to outwit hacking attempts.
From the story: These devices are distinct from previous attempts in car hacking not in function but in initiation.
Attempts to hack a car often involve gaining access to the car's controls without the driver's knowledge.
With lenders installing ignition-locking devices as a loan condition the cars are sold instead effectively pre-hacked d
#Earth's Water Is Older Than The Sun Since water is one of the vital ingredients for life On earth scientists want to know how it got here.
One theory is that the water in our solar system was created in the chemical afterbirth of the Sun
. If that were the case it would suggest that water might only be common around certain stars that form in certain ways.#
#Facebook Says Wi-fi Drones Will be sized Jumbo jet If a new Facebook plan is successful the easiest way to access the cloud may be...
#in the clouds. Facebook wants to spread Wi-fi Internet to unconnected parts of the world with drones
and at#a summit in New york earlier this week the company revealed those drones will be the size of jumbo jets.
In March of 2014 Facebook acquired drone maker Ascenta whose solar-powered drones could potentially#remain airborne at 65000 feet for months or years at a time.
Ascenta's web page has disappeared since the acquisition leaving only a goodbye notice in Facebook-blue.#
#To make this project fly Facebook plans on testing one of the drones over American skies by 2015 hoping to#have the project off the ground in three to five years.
While bringing Internet connectivity to unconnected parts of the world should be a good enough move for public relations Facebook also joined the ongoing war against calling unmanned aircraft drones:
Whatever its#name the craft without people on board will let people access#the web from the heavens.
Internet. org a collaboration between social media giant Facebook#and telecom behemoths Nokia and Qualcomm created a short#optimistic video about these sky Internet#robots.
Watch it below o
#Video: Paralyzed Rats Walk Again, Now Farther Than Ever Like a severed telephone line (from back in the days when phones had wires) a spinal cord injury can cut off communication between the brain
and the rest of the body--leaving a victim unable to move some or all of his or her limbs.
It's one of the leading causes of paralysis in the United states and the debilitating effects often can be permanent.
But over the past few years scientists have begun to overcome some kinds of paralysis using epidural electrical stimulation or EES for short.
With this technique researchers implant two electrode arrays onto the spine: one above the injury and one below.
Then the top array reads the electrical commands from the brain and beams them to the lower array.
Essentially the EES is a bridge that bypasses the spinal cord injury. The technology has given already paralyzed rats
Eventually they just stop firing and the person stops walking once again. Now scientists from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale in Lausanne Switzerland have found a way to vary the EES signal
In the experiment the rats'spinal cords were severed completely causing total paralysis of the hindlimbs. Yet the researchers got the rodents walking again with the help of EES and some training sessions (during
which rats'upper bodies are supported by a cute little vest). Then they monitored the walking patterns of rats
And it appears that the new algorithm has promise. As the signal's frequency was dialed up from 20 to 90 Hertz the rats took larger steps ranging from 2. 9 to 6. 8 centimeters in height.
The new turning algorithm also helped the rats to overcome more complicated obstacles in the form of rodent-sized staircases
Because the frequency modulation helped the rats to take larger steps those rats had a much easier time walking up the staircases.
They climbed the staircases successfully in 99 out of 100 attempts whereas the rats who used the old technology tumbled against
and failed to pass the lower staircase (Aww.).According to the researchers the modulated signal may be more effective
If/when the system becomes adapted for humans the researchers think wearable sensors may be able to take the place of the camera setup.
In a nutshell the new algorithms make it easier to control the body's movements to a finer degree in an adaptable way--and in real time.
Up next the lab will be testing out the new signaling algorithm in human patients beginning as early as next summer r
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