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Warning: SPOILERS
Guest-starring Buckaroo Banzai himself, Peter Weller, the latest episode of Fringe tells the tale of a grief-stricken astrophysicist that modifies his own body into a time machine.
Just look at him!
(borrowed from FringeFiles)
Best.ep.yet!
Here are two short, but very sweet films to keep you amused while we wait for those damn scientists to build our upgrades:
via Planet Damage
Transhumanist pioneer and cyborg-in-progress, Kevin Warwick, will be in the fine city of Melbourne, Australia this coming Wednesday evening.
All the details are on the IEEE Victoria site; here’s the abstract:
In this presentation a look is taken at how the use of implant and electrode technology can be employed to create biological brains for robots, to enable human enhancement and to diminish the effects of certain neural illnesses. In all cases the end result is to increase the range of abilities of the recipients. An indication is given of a number of areas in which such technology has already had a profound effect, a key element being the need for a clear interface linking a biological brain directly with computer technology. The emphasis is clearly placed on practical scientific studies that have been and are being undertaken and reported on. The area of focus is notably the use of electrode technology, where a connection is made directly with the cerebral cortex and/or nervous system. The presentation will consider the future in which robots have biological, or part-biological, brains and in which neural implants link the human nervous system bi-directionally with technology and the internet.
Previously:
What exactly is a cyborg anthropologist?
Let Amber herself tell you, in this video from late last year on ‘prosthetic culture’:
Like to know more? Our friends over at Technoccult just did a great interview with her.
Thanks for the YouTube link Vertigo Jones!
h+ has a great piece written by a genuine Grinder:
I’ve made scalpel incisions in my hands, pushed five-millimeter diameter needles through my skin, and once used a vegetable knife to carve a cavity into the tip of my index finger. I’m an idiot, but I’m an idiot working in the name of progress: I’m Lepht Anonym, scrapheap transhumanist. I work with what I can get
via David Forbes
Previously:
I know, you’re probably sick of AR this and AR that by now, and the technology is only in its infancy, but this? Too awesome not to post.
From Yahoo! News:
An Italian who lost his left forearm in a car crash was successfully linked to a robotic hand, allowing him to feel sensations in the artificial limb and control it with his thoughts, scientists said Wednesday.
During a one-month experiment conducted last year, 26-year-old Pierpaolo Petruzziello felt like his lost arm had grown back again, although he was only controlling a robotic hand that was not even attached to his body.
…
Petruzziello, an Italian who lives in Brazil, said the feedback he got from the hand was amazingly accurate.
“It felt almost the same as a real hand. They stimulated me a lot, even with needles … you can’t imagine what they did to me,” he joked with reporters.
While the “LifeHand” experiment lasted only a month, this was the longest time electrodes had remained connected to a human nervous system in such an experiment, said Silvestro Micera, one of the engineers on the team. Similar, shorter-term experiments in 2004-2005 hooked up amputees to a less-advanced robotic arm with a pliers-shaped end, and patients were only able to make basic movements, he said.
Experts not involved in the study told The Associated Press the experiment was an important step forward in creating a viable interface between the nervous system and prosthetic limbs, but the challenge now is ensuring that such a system can remain in the patient for years and not just a month.
via Joshua Ellis
Scientists of the University of Pennsylvania are creating electronics that almost completely dissolve inside the body, through the use of thin, flexible silicon electronics on silk substrates.
While implanted electronics must usually be encased to protect them from the body, these electronics don’t need protection. The whole process is pretty much seamless: The electronics on the flexible silk substrates conform to biological tissue. The silk melts away over time and the thin silicon circuits left behind don’t cause irritation because they are just nanometers thick.
To make the devices, silicon transistors about one millimeter long and 250 nanometers thick are collected on a stamp and then transferred to the surface of a thin film of silk. The silk holds each device in place, even after the array is implanted in an animal – so far the technique is tested on mice – and wetted with saline, causing it to conform to the tissue surface.
In a paper published in the journal Applied Physics Letters, the researchers report that such circuits can be implanted in animals with no adverse effects. And the performance of the transistors on silk inside the body doesn’t suffer.
The researchers are now developing silk-silicon LEDs that might act as photonic tattoos that can show blood-sugar readings, as well as arrays of conformable electrodes that might interface with the nervous system.
From nextnature.net.
A little love for functional body-mods in today’s xkcd:
We’ve been following the Oscar Pistorius story pretty closely here and for important reasons. He was the first amputee capable, and ultimately, despite contention, allowed to compete against full-bodied opponents in the Olympics.
In the end, he just missed out on qualifying for the 400m sprint and an important moment in sports history was delayed.. but that hasn’t stopped the examination of what advantage his prosthetics give him. Yes, advantage! That is why we’re tracking this so closely.
From Technology Review:
According to Peter Weyand, a physiologist and biomechanist at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, and lead author of the study, much of Pistorius’s hearing focused on the wrong issue. “There was a lot of attention given to the question of whether his blades allowed him to run with less energy than other runners, which is pretty much irrelevant in sprinting,” says Weyand. “It’s sort of like arguing that a Volkswagen will beat a Porsche in a drag race because it gets better gas mileage.” Fuel economy is not the determining factor in sprint races, he explains: “When sprinting, animals are not energy limited; the mechanics are the limiting factor.”
…
Previous research also shows that both elite and ordinary runners with intact legs tend to move their limbs at a similar speed. Pistorius, on the other hand, “can reposition his limbs a lot faster than anyone we’ve ever measured,” says Weyand. But the scientists don’t yet know how to interpret this finding: does it represent an advantage of his comparatively light carbon limbs, or is it merely compensation for the fact that he can’t hit the ground with as much force as intact-limbed runners? “There is no real evidence he has an advantage over others, and there is some evidence the prostheses are a hindrance,” says Daniel Ferris, a biomechanist at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, who was not involved in the study.
“The science is still immature, and we don’t know for certain why he’s mechanically distinct–whether it’s because of his prostheses or because of his biology,” says Herr. One way to answer that question would be to study a runner with one intact and one prosthetic leg and directly compare the biological side to the artificial side–an experiment that Herr says is in the works.
…
One possible explanation for Pistorius’s unusual pattern, says Herr, is that because he does not have calf muscles, the amputee runner is actually at a disadvantage during the first 200 meters–the acceleration phase of the race. It may be in the second half of the race that Pistorius’s inherent talent becomes clear. “Oscar is an outlier,” says Herr, who is a double amputee himself. “The Cheetah has been available to athletes for 15 years, but no one has been able to run as fast as Oscar.” However, Herr says that scientists haven’t yet studied Pistorius and others as they accelerate.
The research is also helping scientists better understand the basics of running. “The Oscar Pistorius case has injected a great deal of interest in the area of bipedal sprinting,” says Herr. “By looking at the differences between amputee and intact-legged runners, we can more fundamentally understand the running mechanism and what is most important for speed.” Relatively little research has been done on the mechanics of sprinting, even in intact-legged runners, partly because it’s difficult to study people moving at such fast speeds. The new research was done using a special treadmill–one of only two or three such machines in the country.
Ferris says that the findings also point to ways that running prostheses could be improved. “One thing to try would be a prosthesis with adjustable stiffness,” he says. “That way, runners may be able to generate higher forces at certain points in the race.”
Absolutely fascinating; one man from South Africa making people see that to be different, isn’t to be less.. it can be so much more.
Time and money, one of the enemies of skin grafts, could soon be a thing of the past:
Now, a team from Germany’s Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft science institute have created a way to mass-produce artificial skin, complete with blood vessels, that can be used for grafts, plastic surgery, or even cosmetics testing.
The basic skin production system, which Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft hopes to start selling next year, can produce 5,000 little swatches of human skin a month, for a total of over 600 square inches of mass-produced tissue. Each 0.12-square-inch section of skin would cost around $49 to produce, far less than the current cost.
The system, which should be available in 2010, is fully automated, with computers controlling the solution that the skin grows in, monitoring the vats for infection, guiding the blade that cuts the swatches, and even testing the quality of the final product. So far, this project has generated 19 patents for Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.
In addition to providing new skin to burn victims, these swatches can also take the place of animals in medical and cosmetic testing. Also, since the swatches can be made to contain blood vessels as well as skin cells, scientists can run circulatory as well as skin-related experiments on them.
Photo and words via popsci.com.
Thanks to LBA for the tip!
Representing the next phase of prosthetic technology, osseointegrated prosthetics are faux limbs that knit themselves with the person’s bone. Since the prosthetic is attached to the bone itself, it creates a more natural movement for the wearer. Last January, we reported on the first dog candidate Cassidy, to receive the new technology. This week, National Geographic is reporting that the German shepard is doing well with his new limb.
Link and photo via nationalgeographic.com.
See also:
Thanks to LBA for the link to the update!
From New Scientist:
The brain maintains a physical map of the body, with different areas in charge of different body parts. Researchers have suggested that when we use tools, our brains incorporate them into this map.
To test the idea, Alessandro Farné of the University of Claude Bernard in Lyon, France, and colleagues attached a mechanical grabber to the arms of 14 volunteers. The modified subjects then used the grabber to pick up out-of-reach objects.
Shortly afterwards, the volunteers perceived touches on their elbow and fingertip as further apart than they really were, and took longer to point to or grasp objects with their hand than prior to using the tool.
The explanation, say the team, is that their brains had adjusted the brain areas that normally control the arm to account for the tool and not yet adjusted back to normal.
“This is the first evidence that tool use alters the body [map],” says Farné.
Farné says the same kind of brain “plasticity” might be involved in regaining control of a transplanted hand or a prosthetic limb when the original has been lost.
via Cat Vincent
The story here is that CNN is reporting this. Or as reader Paul Luthy wrote “It seems significant that a major network news source is treating this as science news…”
So not much progress has been made since we posted about this in Jan ’08; but more people are aware of it now. Thanks CNN!
Via The Frisky comes this rather spooky French short-film.
Concept, currently under development:
Texas-based MicroTransponder has come up with a neural stimulator to ease chronic pain. Small electrodes are implanted by injection in a procedure that takes only 30mn. Once in place, stimulators are powered by a low-energy radio signal, like RFID tags.
With this technology, there is no need for wires or battery replacement. It is possible to tweak some settings using a PDA or a laptop.
Via ubergizmo.com
Allowing for a seamless integration of between human skin and electronics, conductive bodypaint provides the next step towards the future.
Quoted from nextnature.net:
As our lifes are increasingly regulated by electronics and there is a drive towards the miniaturization and portability of electronics on and around the body it seems only logical to place electronic circuits on the surface of body.
How about a conductive ink that is applied directly onto the skin to bridge the gap between electronics and the body. The material allows users to create custom electronics and interact with technology through intuitive gesture. It also allows information to be sent on the surface of the skin from person to person or person to object.
Wow. The possibilities are limitless, though being water soluble is a hurdle that needs to be overcome.
Performing arts, done science style! Using artificial scaffolding, Stelarc’s “third ear” was shown at the Edinburgh International Science Festival.
The 62-year-old Australian plans to install a microphone in the object, allowing Web users worldwide to “hear” via his arm.
“Maybe we are getting a glimpse of the future here, where technologies get embedded [in the body],” computer scientist and festival organizer Michael Smyth told the Scotsman newspaper. “We all carry mobile phones everywhere but suddenly when we break the barrier of the skin, it becomes an issue.”
Link via nationalgeographic.com.
California-based VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies has an ocular implant that, once inserted, would help out anyone suffering from macular degeneration (which means the elderly, in most cases). With macular degeneration, you typically lose your vision in the center of your eyesight, so VisionCare’s telescope implant, which uses two lenses inside a small glass tube, would restore that central blind spot. The downside of the telescope, however, is that you’d experience a loss in your peripheral vision with that eye.
That’s why doctors recommend only implanting one eye. “Instead of using two parts of the same eye, they must switch between two eyes,” Eli Peli, a scientist at The Schepens Eye Research Institute, told the Technology Review, “If they see someone coming but can’t tell who it is, they need to switch to other eye.”
Link and video via dvice.com
