Scientists are getting closer to being able to create an image of whatever you’re picturing your mind. This is either completely amazing or absolutely terrifying. Maybe a little bit of both.
To construct their model, the researchers used an fMRI machine, which measures blood flow through the brain, to track neural activity in three people as they looked at pictures of everyday settings and objects.As in the earlier study, they looked at parts of the brain linked to the shape of objects. Unlike before, they looked at regions whose activity correlates with general classifications, such as “buildings” or “small groups of people.”
This is the GE VScan portable ultrasound machine. Yes, it looks almost exactly like a flip phone, but you can’t make any calls on it.
Instead, it’s designed to make giving ultrasounds cheaper and easier, reducing the number of referrals and improving diagnoses. Because more doctors will be able to have these things, they’ll be able to use them instead of sending patients elsewhere. Also, they can carry one in their purse in case they really need to do an ultrasound on the go, which I’m sure will come in handy.
LifeHand restores touch using thought-controlled robotics
Bringing to mind images of Luke Skywalker’s robotic hand in the film Star Wars, an Italian team recently achieved a prosthetics breakthrough that mirrors science fiction. Neurologist Paolo Maria Rossini led a team at Rome’s Campus Bio-Medico, to create a robotic hand that allows the wearer to control the hand with thoughts and feel sensations through the device.
Funded by the European Union to the tune of $3 million, the project marks the first time an amputee has been able to make truly complex movements using a robotic prosthetic. Called the LifeHand, the project is just the beginning as another E.U. initiative called the SmartHand hopes to replace an entire human arm.
Okay all you fraidycats, you can emerge from your bunkers now, because cellphones aren’t going to kill you after all. The Danish Cancer Society studied just about everyone in Scandinavia over 30 years, concluding there is no “clear change in the long term trends in incidence of brain tumors.” This is the most conclusive study yet of the imagined link between cancer and cellphones.
We’ve heard other credible scientists saying that the “radiation” from cell phones is of a wavelength that can’t possibly have any effect on brain cells. Our take: if you play on people’s fears, you get lots of attention. Attention equals funding. Scare up everybody, profit. Perhaps the same goes for those who dispel fears. Either way, put away your tinfoil hats, hypochondriacs, and be not afraid.
Folks who are unfortunate enough to have their larynx removed because of vocal chord problems have had to replace their normal speaking voice with the robotic-sounding voice of a mechanical larynx. Now, South African scientists have developed an artificial larynx that approximates the human voice.
By using 118 pressure sensors to monitor mouth and tongue movement, the palatometer uses a speech synthesizer to produce the correct words in a more natural voice. There’s still a 0.3-second delay between you making the motions and the words coming out, but they’re hoping to iron such kinks out before they’re given to people to use.
NASA’s “deployable energy absorber” may appear to be a couple of oversized sponges attached to the bottom of a helicopter, but you could be looking at a safety system that helps occupants survive a helicopter crash — or even any kind of air-to-ground impact.
It’s a bit like an airbag for helicopters, one that NASA aerospace engineer Karen Jackson, one of the driving minds behind the project, said of the technology that she’d “like to think the research we’re doing is going to end up in airframes and will potentially save lives.”
