You are currently browsing the grinding.be archives for March, 2009.
This is a clip from the 1999 documentary TechnoCalyps featuring the late Robert Anton Wilson and Terence McKenna. It’s a little dated, but touches on other interpertations of the Singularity outside of the Vinge/Kurzweil AI-induced Singularity.
And personally, I can’t ever get enough McKenna.
(Link Via Phase II)
The Honda Research Institute Japan, ATR and Shimadzu Corporation have come up with a non-invasive control mechanism called the Brain Machine Interface (BMI).
The technology uses electroencephalography (EEG) and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to allow a human to control a robot, in this case the Honda ASIMO, using mere thought. The technology offers up to 90 percent control accuracy without the use of physical implants, a huge milestone in human-to-robot interface that the research group hopes will yield new advances in robotics and artificial intelligence.
Link and photo via dvice.com.
The possibilities….
Too small to set of the bombs, but smart enough to indicated a bomb is present, Gambian poached rats are taught to sniff out explosive devices. Trained from five weeks of age, they can two days worth of work in only 30 minutes. The rats are already working in Mozambique, Africa.
Photo and link via telegraph.co.uk.
I dislike the Barbie concept – so perfect, perky, likable and pink. Gah. I’d be the last person to support anything Barbie, but the recent parental uproar over the “Tattoo Barbie” reminded me very much of what Doktor Sleepless was saying to the grinders:
“That stuff’s just fake.”
“Don’t get idea above your station.”
“Take that shit off”
“Dress properly.”
“Why can’t you be like everyone else”
Sure, these are dolls marketed towards children – but not every parent was upset about this doll. Reading bits and pieces across the interwebs, some parents felt this was their child’s’ generational image, much like how Elvis was controversial during their time. Still others thought it showed a greater respect for tattoos. Some people felt it was wrong to encourage children to get tattoos because real tattoos don’t wash off with soap and water and that children wouldn’t understand the difference.
Yes, because children would never ask their parents about the tattoos they have. They wouldn’t never noticed they don’t wash off with soap and water. They would never ask why they had gotten them in the first place. Tattoos aren’t proper creativity.
NASA is claiming space storms could create a global disaster:
The incursion of the plasma into our atmosphere causes rapid changes in the configuration of Earth’s magnetic field which, in turn, induce currents in the long wires of the power grids. The grids were not built to handle this sort of direct current electricity. The greatest danger is at the step-up and step-down transformers used to convert power from its transport voltage to domestically useful voltage.
According to the NAS report, a severe space weather event in the US could induce ground currents that would knock out 300 key transformers within about 90 seconds, cutting off the power for more than 130 million people…. From that moment, the clock is ticking for America.
Europe doesn’t appear to be in any better shape:
Europe’s electricity grids, on the other hand, are highly interconnected and extremely vulnerable to cascading failures. In 2006, the routine switch-off of a small part of Germany’s grid – to let a ship pass safely under high-voltage cables – caused a cascade power failure across western Europe. In France alone, five million people were left without electricity for two hours. “These systems are so complicated we don’t fully understand the effects of twiddling at one place,” Hapgood says. “Most of the time it’s alright, but occasionally it will get you.”
No water. Low on food. Chaos in the streets. Just what the Doktor ordered?
Via newscientist.com.
Interesting news about the price of materials:
Shapeways, the first online consumer co-creation community is proud to announce a great opportunity for all its community members as well as to anyone that is interested in doing 3D printing. One of the most important promises that Shapeways made when they first launched last year was to make 3D printing affordable to everyone. They’ve followed on their promise, offering all their different kinds of materials at unprecedented prices. Today Shapeways is proud to announce today that their most popular material, White, Strong and Flexible is now 10% cheaper. This is not a temporary discount but a permanent discount!
By lowering the price of it’s best selling material, Shapeways is delivering on its promise to make next-gen products available to everyone and allowing anyone to experience how unique personalized production is. As demand for materials increase, Shapeways will continue to bring the highest quality and the lowest prices to consumers.
They have also introduced Bronze 3D Printing, in the form of the Napkin Ring Poems. To celebrate, they are doing a contest via twitter.
And in conjunction with Shapeways Twitter feed, we are doing a giveaway for the Shapeways Creator Bronze Napkin Ring Poems. If the Shapeways Creator Bronze Napkin Ring Poems are not the coolest thing you have read all day please retweet this blog post on Twitter telling us what you have seen today that is cooler than the Bronze Ringpoem. If this is the coolest thing you’ve seen all day then please also retweet the blog post with a comment. The best answer will get a free Bronze Ringpoem of their all time favorite tweet. A twitter tweet 3D printed in bronze!
Contest ends in six days!
If bronze is not your favorite, the Napkin Ring Poems are also available in stainless steel!
From WIRED:
The first phase of the Pentagon’s plan to regrow soldiers’ limbs is complete; scientists managed to turn human skin into the equivalent of a blastema — a mass of undifferentiated cells that can develop into new body parts. Now, researchers are on to phase two: turning that cellular glop into a square inch of honest-to-goodness muscle tissue.
The Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) just got a one-year, $570,000 grant from Darpa, the Pentagon’s blue-sky research arm, to grow the new tissues. “The goal is to genuinely replace a muscle that’s lost,” biotechnology professor Raymond Page tells Danger Room. “I appreciate that’s a very aggressive goal.” And it’s only one part in a larger, even more ambitious Darpa program, Restorative Injury Repair, that aims to “fully restore the function of complex tissue (muscle, nerves, skin, etc.) after traumatic injury on the battlefield.”
…
Step one will be trying to get those undifferentiated cells to turn into something like muscle cells. That means making sure the cells have myosin and actin — two proteins that are key to forming the cellular cytoskeleton, and to building muscle filaments. Then, Page and his team will try to get those cells to form around a scaffolding of tiny threads, made of biomaterial. Exactly what will be in thread, Page isn’t quite sure — maybe collagens, maybe fibrinogens. It’s one of many mysteries to unravel, as his team tries to grow body parts from scratch.
Video via newscientist.com:
From SingularityHub:
Proteus has designed a platform for body monitoring, called Raisin, which measures when and if a patient takes their medication, and also measures how various bodily vital signs, such as heart rate, respond to the medication. From the Proteus website:
Proteus ingestible event markers (IEMs) are tiny, digestible sensors…Once activated, the IEM sends an ultra low-power, private, digital signal through the body to a microelectronic receiver that is either a small bandage style skin patch or a tiny device insert under the skin. The receiver date- and time-stamps, decodes, and records information such as the type of drug, the dose, and the place of manufacture, as well as measures and reports physiologic measures such as heart rate, activity, and respiratory rate.
All of the data collected by the Proteus system can be sent wirelessly to the doctor for remote monitoring. The system is currently in clinical development.
thanks for the tip-off Cat Vincent!
Before I start, yes. Propranolol. That little geek-ganglion deep inside me just jiggled.
So. A team of Dutch scientists – Merel Kindt being their fearless leader, Marieke Soeter and Bram Vervliet her minions – have successfully weakened fear memories using the beta-blocker drug, Propranolol. And we’re not talking fleeting adrenaline-type halflife here, it’s basically permanent.
Before fear memories are stored in the long-term memory, there is a temporary labile phase. During this phase, protein synthesis takes place that ‘records’ the memories. The traditional idea was that the memory is established after this phase and can, therefore, no longer be altered. However, this protein synthesis also occurs when memories are retrieved from the memory and so there is once again a labile phase at that moment. The researchers managed to successfully intervene in this phase.
The researchers used 2 different pictures of spiders as the ‘fear’ triggers on human volunteers. One of these pictures was accompanied by a pain stimulus, which eventually triggered a startle reaction even when the pain stimulus wasn’t administered. The protein synthesis had been set up.
One day later the fear memory was reactivated, as a result of which the protein synthesis occurred again. Just before the reactivation, the human volunteers were administered the beta-blocker propranolol. On the third day it was found that the volunteers who had been administered propranolol no longer exhibited a fear response on seeing the spider, unlike the control group who had been administered a placebo. The group that had received propranolol but whose memory was not reactivated still exhibited a strong startle response.
Even when the pain stimulus was reapplied, there was still no fear, or anxiety, response. They had weakened the anxiety memory to such an extent that the test subjects could not find the neurolink between ‘spider’ and ‘argh’.
It’s currently being looked at as an alternative form of cognitive behavioural therapy, but personally? I’d like it to hit the market as a way of inhibiting the fear of making mistakes.
Found over at NWO, which was highly difficult for me to read with my pissweak Dutch, so I went to Science Daily instead.
That’s the current iteration of Rob Spence’s project to replace his lost eye with a video camera.
thanks to cnawan for the tip-off!
Previously:
Update: You can track the progress of Eyeborg on twitter.
photo by Politics For Misfits, via the excellent Best Recession Ever!
Queen Hatshepsut has been dead for almost 4,000 years, but you could soon spritz on the perfume she wore. Known as the “she king” for wearing both male and female garb, a bottle engraved with her symbol was found with her possessions. The bottle still contains ancient oil and scientists are hoping to recreate the perfume within a year.
Link and photo via nationalgeographic.com,
@grinders is the twitter feed for grinding.be. Bite-sized grinding chunks, neatly delivered to your twitter account of choice. Please don’t reply to grinders, as it’s now only programmed to relay the posts presented here.
Want to send us things via twitter?
Now you can.
Technically:
A Twitter visualization project using javascript and web browsers is inspired by particle colliders to reveal the hidden connection between tweets
Or a program developed for google chrome, Social Collider gives twitter relationships a gorgeous visual representation.
Quote and video via blogschmog.net, by Kevin Makice.
Sent in by a tipster that wishes to remain anonymous, this video is hilarious:
I can’t wait to see how New Zealand responds to this Welsh challenge.
The Obama administration, while progressive in some areas, still appears to be on the same page as the Bush administration regarding warrentless servailance.
The Obama administration says the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures does not apply to cell-site information mobile phone carriers retain on their customers.
The position is being staked out in a little-noticed surveillance case pending before the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. The case has wide-ranging implications for Americans, as most citizens have or will carry a mobile phone in their lifespan.
At issue is whether the government can require federal judges to order mobile phone companies to release historical cell-tower information of a phone number without probable cause — the standard required for a search warrant. While judges have varied on the issue, the resulting evidence can be used in a criminal prosecution.
The sticky part about the cell phone records is that they include general location as well. So not only can your phone records be pulled without a warrent, but so can your approximate location.
(Can anyone tell me if the location derived from cell-phone triangulation is admissiable in US or foreign courts?)
Also of note the White house has called “National Security” regarding the contents of the recently-proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement:
The White House this week declared (.pdf) the text of the proposed treaty a “properly classified” national security secret, in rejecting a Freedom of Information Act request by Knowledge Ecology International.
“Please be advised the documents you seek are being withheld in full,” wrote Carmen Suro-Bredie, chief FOIA officer in the White House’s Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
The national security claim is stunning, given that the treaty negotiations have included the 27 member states of the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Switzerland and New Zealand, all of whom presumably have access to the “classified” information.
In early January, the Bush administration made the same claim in rejecting (.pdf) a similar FOIA request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
If ratified, leaked documents posted on WikiLeaks and other comments suggest the proposed trade accord would criminalize peer-to-peer file sharing, subject iPods to border searches and allow internet service providers to monitor their customers’ communications.
Between this, and the recent developments in the Al-Haramain domestic spying case that may result in the same kind of evidence sequestering or destruction that led to the 2005 destruction of video tape evidence that was being used by the ACLU to prove government mistreatment of prisoners, it seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
To some degree, the current adminstration has been very true to their pledges of transparency, especially in regards to cleaning up past messes like Gitmo, but as the above links show, there are still some areas where the spectre of the Bush administration lives on in the House of Change. At least for now.
But is that really all that shocking? Electronic information, is still “the new threat” in many circles and policy regarding electronic and information freedoms are still in flux worldwide and across the US. There are things that almost everyone can agree are “bad” — like torture. But ask the person on the street about their electronic liberties and you’re likely to get a blank stare or a lecture about Chris Hanson and America’s Next Top Pedophile.
Linked from: Wired Threat Level and Even More Wired Threat Level
