#Step Closer to Prosthetic Limbs That Recreate Sense of touch A new study led by neuroscientists from the University of Chicago brings us one step closer to building prosthetic limbs for humans that re-create a sense of touch through a direct interface with the brain.
The research, published October 26, 2015, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that artificial touch is highly dependent on several features of electrical stimuli,
Associate professor in the Department of Organismal biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago and senior author of the study. ow we understand the nuts and bolts of stimulation,
artificial upper limb that will restore natural motor control and sensation in amputees. The project has brought together an interdisciplinary team of experts from government agencies
private companies and academic institutions, including the Johns hopkins university Applied Physics laboratory and the University of Pittsburgh. Bensmaia and his colleagues at UCHICAGO are working specifically on the sensory aspects of these limbs.
For this study, monkeys, whose sensory systems closely resemble those of humans, had implanted electrodes into the area of the brain that processes touch information from the hand.
The animals were trained to perform two perceptual tasks: one in which they detected the presence of an electrical stimulus,
For instance, at a certain frequency, the signal may be detectable first at a strength of 20 microamps of electricity.
In natural perception, a principle known as Weber Law states that the just-noticeable difference between two stimuli is proportional to the size of the stimulus. For example, with a 100-watt light bulb,
if you double the power of the light bulb to 200 watts, the JND would also be doubled to 20 watts.
Bensmaia said. his study gets us to the point where we can actually create real algorithms that work.
and brings us one step closer to having human-ready algorithms. l
#They are now 3d printing drugs THE Food and Drug Administration has approved the first prescription drug made through 3d printing:
a dissolvable tablet that treats seizures. Aprecia Pharmaceuticals said Monday the FDA approved its drug Spritam for adults
and children who suffer from certain types of seizures caused by epilepsy. The tablet is manufactured through a layered process via 3d printing
and dissolves when taken with liquid. The Ohio-based company says its printing system can package potent drug doses of up to 1, 000 milligrams into individual tablets.
It expects to launch Spritam in the first quarter of 2016. The FDA has approved previously medical devices including prosthetics made with 3d printing.
An agency spokeswoman confirmed the new drug is the first prescription tablet approved that uses the process.
Aprecia said in a statement it plans to develop other medications using its 3d platform in coming years,
including more neurological drugs. The company is owned privately. Doctors are increasingly turning to 3d printing to create customised implants for patients with rare conditions
and injuries, including children who cannot be treated with adult-size devices. The FDA held a workshop last year for medical manufacturers interested in the technology o
#iphone 6s will be announced in a month The rumoured September 9 (September 10 in Australia) reveal date lines up well with Apple usual September event,
with the device usually going on sale two weeks later. There still debate on whether Apple 2015 device will be called the iphone 7
or iphone 6s most people have their money on the latter, following Apple usual device patterns.
The updates are usually more about what inside the device than outside, with no significant design change for the device expected.
However, leaks and reports have suggested that the camera battery and display technology are all going to receive big overhauls.
What likely to be includedthe big advancement with the iphone 6s we are likely to see is Force Touch screen technology reports Business Insider.
Apple debuted this new type of display with the Apple Watch and new Macbook earlier this year,
where the device can detect different pressures used when touching the screen. For example, when using the Apple Watch,
you can press down with slightly more force to change the watch face. Even though it hasn been announced yet,
claiming it will be as handy as the right mouse click is on a computer. While Apple fiddling around with the screen technology,
it also expected that both models will receive a higher screen resolution for a clearer display.
It also rumoured that they will finally have a sapphire glass screen which will help keep it protected from scratches and shattering when dropped.
Apple has been putting a lot of emphasis on the iphone as a photography device, and that looking to take a step even further with the iphone 6s.
An employee of Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturing company who builds Apple iphones is claiming that the iphone 6s
and iphone 6s Plus will have 12mp rear cameras and support 4k video recording. This comes off the back of Apple acquiring a company in April
which specialises in smartphone cameras to match DSLR quality. It also lines up with reports from known Apple expert John Gruber,
who said that the iphone 6s will have he biggest camera jump ever, bringing it to DSLR quality.
In the longshot, but still possible category, we could see a cheaper iphone 6c, which will feature a plastic body like the iphone 5c but with the internal specs of the regular iphone 6
. What we won seewith Apple S cycles they never introduce radical new changes, so don expect any new screen sizes or a new design.
At best, they might introduce a new colour, but even that seems unlikely. Despite it being a favourite feature by Android users
and even featuring on the Apple Watch, it not believed that the iphone 6s will feature wireless charging,
due to the company desire to create its own wireless standard. And a price cut? Forget about it.
If anything, thanks to our Aussie dollar we could see a price increase for 2015 iphones
#iphone leak reveals new parts The video at Unbox Therapy shows what is claimed to be leaked parts of the Apple iphone 6s,
the smaller of the two new iphones that Apple is expected to unveil at a rumoured launch on September 9.
Shortly after the release of Apple first phablet, the iphone 6 Plus, some customers complained that the 5. 5-inch smartphone had a weakness in the frame that meant they bent
if you applied force in a particular way, such as sitting on it. SMARTPHONE UPGRADE: What to expect in the new Apple iphone 6sapple later admitted the problem
although it said it was xtremely rarethe Unbox Therapy video out today shows the backplate for the iphone 6s,
the smaller of the new iphones, compared with the backplate of the iphone 6. The new design is slightly bigger:
138. 2mm tall by 67. 16mm wide versus the current design of 138. 09mm by 66. 91mm.
Yet despite the slight increase in size, the new frame is 2g lighter, suggesting that Apple is using a higher grade aluminium
which it uses in the Apple Watch Sport. The key design change means that the Apple iphone 6 is stronger in its most vulnerable point.
The video today is a sign that Apple is keen not to have another Bendgate,
although it should be viewed with a few qualifications. Firstly, the leaked iphone 6 backplate might not be a final version.
Also Bendgate was only a problem with the bigger phone, and the video does not show proof that the new design is across both models of iphone P
#Google restructure easy as ABC Chief executive Larry page said the new structure will make the operation of the company leaner
and more accountablegoogle shares jumped five per cent after the restructure was announced, Fortune reported. Under the restructure plan,
Alphabet will be comprised of the core Google business including internet search, mapping and Youtube along with newer businesses that will be managed separately, such as Google Fiber, Nest and the investment arm Google Ventures.
Google CEO Page will become CEO of the new entity, with his cofounder Sergey Brin serving as president.
Longtime Google executive Sundar Pichai who has taken on increasingly important roles at the company in recent years,
will be CEO of the core Google business. Under the new structure, Page said the ewer Google is slimmed a bit down,
with the companies that are pretty far afield of our main internet products contained in Alphabet insteadalphabet will be comprised of the current efforts in life sciences such as glucose-sensing contact lens and the health research firm Calico,
he said. Page parent company will also include the drone delivery project Wing and investment arms of the California technology giant. undamentally
we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren related very,
he said. THEYE WATCHING: Creepy things Google knows about youlphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence.
In general, our model is to have a strong CEO who runs each business, with Sergey and
me in service to them as needed. lphabet Inc will replace Google Inc as the publicly traded entity,
and all shares of Google will automatically convert to shares of Alphabet, with all of the same rights,
Page said. Google will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet. The reorganisation comes amid concerns that Google dominance of the tech sector may have peaked as the landscape evolves.
Google has for years been the leader in internet search and has turned advertising linked to those searches into a highly lucrative business.
But its shares have struggled since hitting an all-time high in early 2014 and it has little to show for ventures in other areas:
self-driving cars, Google glass, internet balloons, health care, GOOGLE TV mobile payments, home automation and its Google+social network, among others.
The news has been met with much discussion on social media i
#t bleak The universe is dying he Universe has plonked basically itself down on the sofa,
pulled up a blanket and is about to nod off for an eternal doze, the Research Professor Simon Driver said.
But, before you quit your job to prepare for a doomsday party, you should note it won happen for at least another 100 billion years.
An international team of astronomers from the Galaxy and Mass Assembly Survey analysed starlight from more than 200,000 galaxies to find the universe is emitting far less energy than it once was.
Professor Driver from the International Centre for Radio astronomy Research, said scientists came to this conclusion after conducting the largest multi wavelength survey ever put together. e used as many space
and ground-based telescopes we could get our hands on to measure the energy output of over 200,000 galaxies across as broad a wavelength range as possible,
he said. In total the team measured outputs across 21 different wavelengths from ultraviolet (characterises younger stars) to the far infrared (characterises younger stars.
Prof Driver said the data showed the amount of energy being generated was two times less than the amount of energy that was being generated two billion years ago. hat tells us that the universe is essentially dying,
and moving towards its grand era of retirement after having produced massive bursts of energy early on in the formation of the universe. t now fading and dwindling and diminishing. t will just become a very dark,
but this work shows that it happening across all wavelengths p
#NASA Mars isolation experiment begins SIX people are about to shut themselves inside a dome in Hawaii for a year,
in the longest US isolation experiment yet aimed at helping NASA prepare for a pioneering journey to Mars. The crew includes a French astrobiologist, a German physicist and four Americans a pilot, an architect, a doctor/journalist and a soil
The men and women have their own small rooms, with space for a sleeping cot and desk,
and having limited access to the internet. So what kind of person wants to spend a year of their life this way?
she wrote on her blog, Livefrommars. life. NASA current technology can send a robotic mission to the Red planet in eight months,
The US space agency is studying how these scenarios play out On earth in a program called Hawaii Space exploration Analog
and has received just funding of another million for three more in the coming years according to principal investigator Kim Binsted. hat is very cheap for space research,
and learning to cook things like bagels and pizza dough with the ingredients on hand. Then, just days after the mission ended in Mid-june,
eating fresh vegetables, using a knife to cut meat, swimming, and drinking soda and champagne. couldn believe how much I had missed the flavours and textures of a juicy steak,
#Google reveals new look logo Google logo keeps its four-color scheme but shifts to a soft sans-serif font.
The 17-year-old internet company is keen to follow users of its online products onto new generations of internet-linked devices such as smartphones,
tablets and watches. ee introducing a new logo and identity family that reflects this reality
and shows you when the Google magic is working for you, even on the tiniest screens,
the California-based internet firm said in a blog post. ee taken the Google logo and branding,
which were built originally for a single desktop browser page, and updated them for a world of seamless computing across an endless number of devices
and different kinds of inputs such as tap, type and talk. he unveiling of the new logo came just weeks after a surprise reorganisation of Google under a newly formed parent company called Alphabet.
The plan calls for Alphabet to be the corporate parent, with an operating unit for Google and its related search operations
and a handful of other operating firms created for projects in health, internet delivery, investment and research.
While Google is known as the dominant player in internet search, it has launched a variety of projects in recent years that are related marginally at best to its core operation.
The projects include self-driving cars, Google glass, internet balloons, drones, health care, GOOGLE TV, mobile payments, home automation and its Google+social network, among others.
The Google unit, to be headed by current company vice president Sundar Pichai, will include search, ads, maps, Youtube, Android and related technology infrastructure.
The revised design unveiled on Tuesday features the same mix of blue red, yellow and green that Google has been using throughout its nearly 17-year history,
though the hues are slightly different. Google also invented a new typeface called roduct Sansthat is meant to resemble the simple printing in a grade-school book.
The overhaul also will change the appearance of the letter that Google uses as its shorthand logo on the smaller screens of smartphones and other mobile devices.
The will now be displayed capitalised and in colour instead of being kept lower case and white. Google last tweaked its logo in 2013 g
#The world first dog emotion tracker has been created to help humans understand their pets FINALLY! A tech company has decided to use the internet of things to give the people
what they really need. No longer will you be left to hopelessly wonder what your dog might be thinking this new gadget promises to translate the complex language your pooch is speaking.
New york-based firm Dogstar has created a device it describes as the orld first dog emotion sensor Known as Tailtalk,
the product is a Fitbit-esque device placed on your dog tail to capture and analyse its every emotion. ail wagging is asymmetric
and includes complex emotional signals that the human eye cannot recognise, the company wrote. Consulting with professors from the College of Veterinary medicine in Cornell University, the company established the direction a dog wags its tail directly reflected its mood.
Dogs wagging their tails to the left were found to be expressing negative emotions such as fear, anxiety and aggression,
while dogs with tails wagging to the right were showing positive feelings like happiness, excitement and satisfaction.
With this in mind, Dogstar created a 3-axis accelerometer and gyroscope to help monitor
the Tail Tracker delivers messages straight from the heart of your furry friend to your smartphone, Dogstar wrote.
he told Motherboard. ur biggest initial worry was about whether it would stay on the tail,
#Mastercard trialling new technology to authorise payments with selfies AT LAST, a company has found a way to apply monetary value to arguably society most worthless trend the selfie.
Mastercard is trialling innovative new technology that allows shoppers to authorise a payment with a selfie instead of a password or a signature.
a selfie is taken a self photo, normally with a phone. Mastercard president of enterprise security solutions Ajay Bhalla called it the ext wave of technology that will change the consumer experience for shopping digitally t all part of our role in making commerce available anywhere
any time, on any digital device, he said. A pilot program is currently being undertaken at a credit union in America,
and another in The netherlands. The new selfie payment technology will be implemented in Mastercard Identity Check app.
When a customer purchases a product from an online merchant that requires a verified identity,
the customer mobile phone will receive a ush notification which will open the app and ask to take a selfie.
they will be required to linkto show the facial recognition scan software that they are a real person.
A survey of about 10,000 Mastercard customers found one-third of customers had cancelled an online transaction
Mastercard is also looking at voice or heartbeat recognition as payment options in the future y
#Drought prompts 25 per cent water cut in California They have been measuring the snowpack at Phillips in the Sierra nevada mountains in California on the first day of April every year since 1941.
where farmers are allowed to pump as much as they want. And the Colorado river which waters much of southern California, has been suffering from 14 years of low flow.
Climatologists predict that persistent"megadroughts"are going to be a feature of climate change in the American West.
Water, they used to say out West, flows uphill to money. But no longer, it seems t
#Human cruise control app steers people on their way For a few days last summer, a handful of students walked through a park behind the University of Hannover in Germany.
Each walked solo, but followed the same route as the others: made the same turns,
Instead, their steps were steered from a phone 10 paces behind them, which sent signals via bluetooth to electrodes attached to their legsmovie Camera.
These stimulated the students'muscles, guiding their steps without any conscious effort. Max Pfeiffer of the University of Hannover was the driver.
His project directs electrical currentmovie Camera into the students'sartorius, the longest muscle in the human body,
which runs from the inside of the knee to the top of the outer thigh.
When it contracts it pulls the leg out and away from the body. To steer his test subjects left,
although it is possible that the rise of wearable computing might help. Pfeiffer says the electrode's current causes a tingling sensation that diminishes the more someone uses the system.
Volunteers said they were comfortable with the system taking control of their leg muscles but only if they felt they could take control back.
One of the students compared the feeling to cruise control in a car, where the driver can take control back
Pfeiffer steered students manually, but the plan is to build the mechanism into other apps.
meaning they never have to look at their phone or think about where they are going.""When I use Google maps and
I navigate somewhere, I am always pulling my mobile out of my pocket to check,
"he says.""We want to remove this step out of the navigation process so you just say want to go there,
Evan Peck of Bucknell University in Pennsylvania says Pfeiffer's system will stop us being chained to our smartphones."
"This article appeared in print under the headline"Human cruise control r
#Womb milk nourishes human embryo during first weeks of pregnancy Call it the milk of life not breast milk,
but womb milk. For the first 11 weeks of pregnancy, before the mother's nutrient-rich blood supply is plumbed in,
all the materials and energy for building a baby are supplied by secretions from glands in the uterus lining.
For the first time, researchers have worked out in detail how nutrients make their way from these glands into the developing embryo."
"It's like a rapidly growing building site, "says John Aplin of the University of Manchester, UK.
During pregnancy, the lining of the uterus behaves quite differently to normal: the glands start storing large amounts of glucose as glycogen,
and the"womb-milk"secretions dry up. But how the glycogen and other materials for baby-building were transported to the embryo
and placenta was a mystery until now. Vital nutrients To investigate, Aplin and his colleagues examined womb,
some is used straight away as energy to help the embryo grow, and the rest is reconverted to the storage molecule,
they contain protein that can be broken down into amino acids the building blocks from which tissue is assembled.
so the pressure of arterial blood would likely dislodge the embryo from the wall of the uterus.
"It could be that these trigger settings in the embryo that affect the risk of obesity or diabetes in life,
"says Graham Burton of the University of Cambridge, whose team discovered in 2002 that the uterus lining not the mother's blood nourishes the embryo."
"Our understanding has been revolutionised over the past decade by the discovery that nutrients are supplied by these glands in the uterus lining during the first trimester the so-called'uterine milk,
#ipstickin the brain could predict damage just in time A dipstick inserted into the brain can check its energy levels,
just like checking oil levels in a car. The dipstick is already available and can save lives,
in the hope of encouraging more hospitals to adopt it. The approach involves inserting a slim,
including glucose, the brain main energy source. When used to monitor the brains of people in intensive care after a stroke or head injury,
it warns doctors if glucose starts to dip which can cause brain damage. The probe can theoretically monitor almost any molecule,
but Rostami says the most useful parameters are glucose, which shows if there is a good blood supply,
and lactate and pyruvate, two metabolites that indicate if brain cells are using the glucose to release energy.
Although widely available, the device has so far mainly been used as a research tool rather than to guide treatment.
although the bleeding had stopped, the woman brain glucose levels had fallen, probably caused by other blood vessels constricting.
People in intensive care are hooked already up to a host of monitors, which together keep track of numerous parameters including heart rate and levels of glucose and oxygen in the blood.
An electroencephalogram (EEG) can give a read-out of the brain electrical activity, while various kinds of scan can give a snapshot of its health,
what going on in the brain after injury is a good thing, says Karim Brohi a trauma specialist at the Royal London Hospital.
But he cautions that there are no figures as yet on whether such monitoring improves survival rates.
Sometimes a second probe is placed near the original site of injury, to provide more information t
#ipstickin the brain could predict damage just in time TO CHECK a car oil levels, use a dipstick.
To check the brain has enough energy, we might be able to do the same, using a probe that can monitor fluid in the brain. he goal is to save brain tissue,
in the hope that more hospitals would adopt it. The approach involves inserting a 1-centimetre-long probe directly into the brain.
including glucose, the brain main energy source. When used on people in intensive care after a stroke or head injury,
it warns doctors if glucose starts to dip which can cause brain damage. The tool is widely available,
but it is not clear yet whether the information it provides saves lives, meaning it is used largely for research instead.
But Rostami believes her use of the probe helped to save a woman life last year.
The woman was in intensive care after a stroke that involved bleeding on the surface of her brain.
although the bleeding had stopped, the woman brain glucose levels were falling, probably because other blood vessels had constricted.
People in intensive care are hooked already up to a host of monitors which keep track of things such as heart rate and levels of glucose and oxygen in the blood.
An electroencephalogram (EEG) can give a read-out of the brain electrical activity, while various kinds of scan can give a snapshot of its health,
what going on in the brain after injury is a good thing, says Karim Brohi, a trauma specialist at the Royal London Hospital.
But he cautions that there are no figures yet on whether such monitoring does improve survival rates.
Carbon dioxide emissions from power plants could be put to good use, preventing fracking chemicals from contaminating drinking water supplies.
and slashed energy prices, there is a risk that toxic compounds in the fracking fluid can get into shallow aquifers via fractures in the bedrock.
Andres Clarens at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and his team say pumping CO2 into the wells could prevent this.
it reacts with silicate minerals in rocks to form a carbonate deposit. In the lab, the team has mimicked conditions in the Marcellus shale, a vast hive of fracking activity beneath New york state and Pennsylvania.
They found that half of the CO2 injected in their experimental simulation was converted into solid carbonates within a day.
who presented the work this week at the Goldschmidt conference in Prague, the Czech republic. The technology for injecting CO2 into rocks already exists
and models suggest that shale has an enormous capacity for storing it. The idea is fascinating,
a petroleum geologist at Newcastle University in the UK but unnecessary. ractures rarely extend past a few hundred metres above the shale reservoir,
because the wells must be dug through shallow layers where the aquifers lie in order to reach shales. here is great potential for this technology to help improve the integrity of well bores,
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011