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| Unrivaled control of a robotic arm has been achieved using a paralyzed woman's thoughts, a US study says. |
Jan Scheuermann, who is 53 and paralyzed from the neck down, was able to deftly grasp and move a variety of objects just like a normal arm.
Brain implants were used to control the robotic arm, in the study reported in the Lancet medical journal.
Experts in the field said it was an "unprecedented performance" and a "remarkable achievement".
Jan was diagnosed with spinocerebellar degeneration 13 years ago and progressively lost control of her body. She is now unable to move her arms or legs.
Hey everyone,
I know our hearts were saddened this past weekend upon hearing about the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut and the stabbings in China. As we approach this holiday season and afterwards, please continue to keep the families of those affected, and their respective communities in your thoughts and/or prayers.
On the comic front, I have a couple of quick updates:
(1) The first week got off to a strong start, with 47% of the project being funded! With this being my first Kickstarter campaign I didn’t know what to expect, so the amount of love and support I’ve received out the gate has been nothing short of amazing. To every backer and person who helped spread the word, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
(2) My goal for this week is to keep up the momentum from last week, and I believe that by people continuing to get the word out, we can make that happen.
(3) Colored pages are coming in, and they look great! So expect to see some colored pages real soon.
(4) Last but not least, I’ve been fortunate enough to have two great friends who are also in the comic world share their thoughts on what they liked about Lightweightz: The Anthology Part One, and why people should support Lightweightz: The Anthology Part Two.
Again, thanks for helping the movement get off to a strong start, and I look forward to us achieving the same this week.
With Gratitude,
Justin
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1862527497/lightweightz-the-anthology-part-two
“The Good Old Days” part 2: the world IS getting better
Every time you are shocked or dismayed by something you see people undertake to do to other people, remember that not long ago, you just wouldn’t have heard, seen or read about it. The fact that so many think the world is getting worse is a sign that it’s getting better; we’re trying harder, pulling away from the old norms, including more people in the fabric of society.
For the first time in human history, the concept of inalienable rights actually is somewhat broadly considered to apply to all categories of human being. Its application still lags well behind its ideation, but at least all draft-eligible Americans can vote now–it cannot be forgotten that that has not yet even been true for fifty years!!! We are shocked and dismayed, as more of our old assumptions are brought to the ground; this dismay represents progress, as more people are brought into the fold of basic human opportunity. The best we can do, any of us older than preschool age, is thank ourselves for every way in which we’re free from the poisonous crap that’s been drummed into us from birth. We are products of a poisoned world, a world where people are defined by ridiculous parameters and not taught to see each other as individuals; where violence as instruction is taken for granted, and wars last for astounding lengths of time: where people collude to exclude others from citizenship for reasons as preposterous as skin color, genitalia or inherited religion. Where bullying, humiliation and authoritarian punishment are rites of passage.
Fortunately, the grand scale of human-on-human atrocity is actually getting smaller, as the world shrinks and we increasingly realize that, as it was once said, ‘an explorer from another galaxy would find us all very much alike’. We have to remember that, and remember that the only hope for our wretched but brilliant species lies in its future.
The last week in December, PAnd0RA 001 returns as your Holiday gift to brighten your travels through deep space! 'A Broken Jar' sees the vivacious android confront both her growing popularity and her obsessive attraction to the strange unmarked Transport BOX secured aboard the Interstellar Transport DROMEDARY. Meanwhile forces to retrieve the BOX and insights PAnd0RA will need for her development are moving to converge on her upon the Dromedary's arrival in the HESTIA system. Questions will be raised and answers will be given but will anyone involved be able to handle them? Much will be revealed in the next episode of 'The PAnd0RA Ultimatum'!
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| A cross-sectional image is shown of a silicon-based optical fiber with solar-cell capabilities. Shown are the layers -- n+, i, and p+ -- that have been deposited inside the pore of the fiber. (Image: Badding lab, Pennsylvania State University) |
University Park, PA and Southampton, England--Researchers at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Southampton have created a silicon-based optical fiber with solar-cell capabilities that is scalable to many meters in length and has a bend radius of about 400 microns. Possible in the future: weaving together solar-cell silicon wires to create flexible, curved, or twisted solar fabrics. The findings are posted in an early online edition of Advanced Materials and will be published on a future date in the journal's print edition.
The team's new findings build on earlier work addressing the challenge of merging optical fibers with silicon chips. Rather than merge a flat chip with a round optical fiber, the team found a way to build a new kind of optical fiber with its own integrated electronic component, bypassing the need to integrate fiber-optics with chip-based electronics. To do this, they used high-pressure chemical vapor deposition to deposit semiconducting materials directly into holes in optical fibers.
Laser Focus World:
Silicon p-i-n junction optical fibers could lead to photovoltaic fabrics
Without you there would have been no Blade Runner.
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Artist's impression of a protostar, with its jets of outflowing matter, protoplanetary disk, and envelope of gas and dust. |
In their early stages of formation, the objects that will eventually become stars are small. They grow by gathering material from the surrounding cloud of gas. At least, that's what current theories tell us what happens. Due to the difficulty of resolving star systems during their formative years, most observations have been from later periods of their evolution, after the protostar has reached a substantial fraction of its final size and mass.
A new observation has revealed the youngest protostar yet observed. John J. Tobin and colleagues measured the properties of the newborn star and its environment, determining that it had only accreted about 20 percent of the matter surrounding it, and hasn't even begun nuclear fusion. Based on this, the protostar was likely no more than 300,000 years old at the time of observation, with the distinct possibility that it was even younger.
Ars Technica: Astronomers discover youngest protostar yet observed, Matthew Francis
I pulled the scheduled post on p-i-n diode technology. It will appear on Monday.
Nigerian Novelist Chimamanda Adichie spoke at TED on a subject from which I title this posting (and give her credit), related to the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut yesterday. It is east of Danbury, for me merely 30 - 45 minutes drive from me in New York.
Ms. Adichie was speaking on the power of ignorance with respect to stereotypes. Linda Christensen, following this theme as well, encouraged her African American and Latino students to express their experiences in personal essays.
We are getting bits and pieces of a story and calls for reactions; bills. All that may come to pass eventually, but some things to consider, as a single story isn't the full picture:
- Doomsday: a lot of angst and hype about next Friday being suddenly 10^100 years into the future with imminent, hypo thermal death to the universe. At least that's the conventional science regarding the universe's end -- and NOT the hype. The good news is by THAT distant time, we'll all be gone (and I no longer blogging) when this occurs: just not next Friday.
- Active shooter training: we're going to have to think about this. Places like Israel search you before you enter...the mall. That's not comfortable for US residents to think about, just as taking off our shoes and pat searches in airports still are not comfortable post-9/11, but we may have to think about and earnestly consider things we'd rather not.
- Mental health: it amazes me that we'd never think of walking about with an obviously broken arm, pierced skin, blood streaming out of an open wound, yet we HIDE mental health issues. We stigmatize those that want to seek help as if admittance of a problem would be "career limiting." We spend more time on Facebook and "words with friends" when we need to speak to one another; see a play versus a movie; go to dinner at a restaurant and talk to one another.
- Gun control: we're going to have to debate this (unlike both candidates' dodge in the last election cycle). Debate: A formal discussion on a particular topic in a public meeting or legislative assembly, in which opposing arguments are put forward. Instead of dismissing occurrences as "isolated"; this is becoming too frequent to ignore.
And one in particular, who can no longer...
It is hard to design a dwelling, especially to project into the future. You have to decide to embrace the present building codes and area architecture and orchestrated consumer wants or cut new turf. For instance the one room cabin soon evolved into one family room and a master bed chamber. The fireplace was the kitchen. Now each family member deserves a bedroom or mini-apartment and every room is big. Glamor, elegance, prestige, status, the display to neighbors that either I have made it or I am important is evident.
Many rooms are designed around activities. Formal dining rooms with individual eatery, ample shoulder separation and ostentatious junk jewelery chandeliers suspended like the sword of Damocles, chairs hard and straight and Emily Post worship. That was the scheme even with our crowded family table, messy kids, finger foods and more modest display. This beats eat where you sit and sleep where you drop, it's a more civilized arrangement. Africans families when I seen them in the magazines shared a pot of communal stew. Though their eating was orderly and practical they soon also succumbed to Emily Post.
Designing the future is hard because we don't often view the details like when Superman makes a potty run does his cape get in the way? He rushes to his next call with toilet paper stuck to his boot. In the Star Wars saga the young Vader has a fruit meal with his beau, so human, unlike Jar Jar Binks whose spaghetti whip tongue is faster than you can say "pass the........" Tatoone dining where Luke's Aunt swears by her nuke powered food processor, even they sit at a table. My dreams go back to "Lost in Space", where they lived in a RV and had an ATV or Space 1999 and their environmentally sound moon base on an drifting asteroid (NASA likes that episode).
So why the future, why the techno hut? Because most of us live in homes we didn't make for ourselves by people who had dreams and standards that didn't regard how we think and desire and live. We check out the place and adapt. We adapt within certain parameters and are driven to satisfy ourselves and showoff to others. National Geographic ran a photographic series that showed families sitting amongst their material possessions from different parts of the globe. That was totally interesting. Today I drive by homes and see garage doors open and packed to the hilt. We put puffy furniture in a small room and complain about no space and awkward comfort. I laughed at Thomas Edison's house (so small) and at ancient homes in Africa, we are so advanced, NOT!
The techno hut has four parts. The private space for sleeping and bath, food storage and prep, utility room and the common space. Present homes maximize everything. Eventually you can't economically support the home and each family member is isolated in their own personal compartment. The individual autonomy is exaggerated in this culture, where as in African culture both autonomy and family blend in a good proportion. This consideration reflects in the arrangement of the architecture. Talk about fractals, the individual and the family and the hood have the same look and feel. The home accommodates that in a practical way. For instance we need huge powered food storage when food is bought for the long run. Not so big when markets are local and the habit is to consume while fresh. We spend so much time working and have no time for hunting, gathering, growing and preparing, we consume ready to eat packaged meals and fast foods, so we don't need a big kitchen, do we?
The physical body is not as advanced as people think. That capsule that contains every chemical needed will fail because the body has to push through some bulk, because that is the way the body is made. Super mental means nothing to blood in the arteries and a pumping heart. A man must poop something. A home can be just a force field, but to cover the butt, can I get some privacy please? So to me the most advanced techno hut is probably the simplest that makes survival in an environment practical. First provide the basics, food, heat/cool, light, water and waste removal, then some free space. Yeah, we can jazz it a bit.
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| To verify entanglement among the three photons, the physicists measured the times that the photons arrived at a detector. This 2D histogram shows that groups of three photons are all localized to a small region, indicating strong correlations in the arrival times of the three photons. Image credit: L. K. Shalm, et al. ©2012 Macmillan Publishers Limited |
The physicists, from the University of Waterloo and the University of Calgary, have published their paper on three-photon energy-time entanglement in a recent issue of Nature Physics. As the physicists explain, this new form of entanglement is the three-photon version of the famous EPR correlations for continuous variables (e.g., position and momentum) between two particles. The EPR thought experiment, published in 1935, raised questions about the fundamental concepts underlying the young theory of quantum mechanics. "The Heisenberg uncertainty principle forbids one from simultaneously discovering both the position and momentum of a particle with arbitrary accuracy," lead author Krister Shalm of the University of Waterloo told Phys.org. "EPR pointed out that, if you create a pair of entangled particles, it is possible to measure both the position and momentum of both of them with arbitrary precision. It is still impossible to learn both the position and momentum of each of the individual particles, but, instead, we can learn information about the total position and momentum they share. Entangled particles, in some sense, are the ultimate team players. They lose their own individual identity with all the information in the system contained in the correlations."
Phys.org: Physicists extend entanglement in Einstein experiment, Lisa Zyga
The following is an excerpt from "Her Hand in Mine," a novella-length story I wrote in conjunction with my upcoming webcomic, "Wild Space Saga." Any critiques or requests to read the story are welcome.
The story is about a lonely scrap hauler named Jules who reunites with an alien friend from his childhood, and resumes their relationship, which has matured from the puppy love of their youth. Enjoy!
As it had done innumerable times that week, the incoming call hologram appeared on my phone as it lay upon the dresser across from my bed.
"Li-ah, why won't you turn that thing off?" Sar'vana murmured plaintively, her words coming in a background of soft, relaxed purring as I applied the detangling ointment to her fur and massaged it into her skin. It was a type of oil that Felyans used on themselves for personal grooming, but it was often customary for mates to apply it to each other. The process was very intimate, as I learned, like a full body massage when done correctly. And Sar'vana was a very good teacher. The scent, I learned, was the same familiar aroma that had constantly emanated from her and most other Felyans, something akin to baby powder.
"There might be an emergency," I replied as I finished applying the ointment to her tail, and reached for her brush.
"Well, so far, it's only been your friend, as usual," Sar'vana said, and hissed at the phone.
"He'll give up," I assured her.
"He hasn't yet."
I sighed as the hologram faded away. "You're right; he hasn't." It was the fourth day, I learned from viewing the timestamp on a previous attempt of Chester's that had occurred when we had last woken up. Time had otherwise blurred together in those endless hours, becoming meaningless as Sar'vana and I indulged ourselves in each other. "He's too damn persistent," I said with a deep, mildly annoyed sigh. "He knew that I'd be with you this week. He's got too much personality and not enough patience."
Sar'vana giggled at my remark, and then stiffened as my brush passed over the very sensitive base of her tail. She shuddered, and growled softly and deeply as I passed its fine bristles over her luxurious fur, being especially soft and gentle upon this part. Her reaction never failed to both amuse and arouse me, and my laugh was just as soft as her growl as I passed the brush several times upon the area.
"Oh, you're doing that on purpose, now," she said, trying to sound annoyed, but there was a betraying pleasured lilt in her voice that I could easily detect.
"Maybe," I said coyly.
Her tail slapped me upon my side as she hissed faintly. It was a playful, gentle slap, and I saw a faint smile upon her muzzle as she cast an alluring sideways glance at me.
"So are you really pissed, or are you just being frisky?" I asked, the scent of the ointment and the sight of Sar'vana's supine body building up the desire that my grooming of her had already thoroughly stoked.
"Well, now … that depends on whether or not you can finish the job without becoming 'frisky' yourself," Sar'vana said, and rolled over onto her back.
Laughing, I accepted her challenge, and forced down my desire as I went back to work.
"By the way, who is Keisha?"
That question was like a bucket of cold water on me, eliminating every vestige of my arousal, even as my hands neared her breasts. How could this have happened? I wondered, my mind racing with mixed fear and consternation. Hadn't I blocked Keisha's code from accessing my phone?
"Keisha…?" It was the only thing I could say. The name came out sounding incongruous and utterly stupid in my ears.
"I saw that your friend had left you a message last night," Sar'vana said. "You were still asleep. He said that Keisha was wondering where you were, and wondering why you never returned her calls."
I sighed with resignation. I'd expected this, of course; It wasn't as if I planned to keep this a secret. I knew that I'd have to tell Sar'vana about this before long, but I had hoped that it would have been on my terms.
I sat up in the bed, and curled my knees up to my chest. Sar'vana, noticing the doubtless troubled look on my face, turned over on her side, facing me.
"I don't know how you'll take this," I said. "You've probably already suspected that you're not the first woman I've been with, right?"
Sar'vana nodded without word.
I had intended to keep quiet about some of the things I knew, to soften the sting of my confession, but my lips overrode my intentions, as if an angel were forcing me to purge my conscience of all its sordid contents. I told Sar'vana everything. I told her about Keisha, the burn, our nights together, my confusion, and my regret. I couldn't bear to look directly at her as I spoke, yet I could feel Sar'vana's beautiful, violet eyes fixed upon me as I talked on, like a balloon inflated with sin releasing its contents through a tiny hole.
"I'm not a virgin, Vani," I said in conclusion, "but I had little interest in women until I met you. And then … well … you know the rest." Drained and without excuse, my eyes tightened as I, guilty by my own word, waited for the storm of reproach that I was certain would come.
"Whom do you love?" Sar'vana asked.
Her question, spoken gently, and devoid of any judgment, caught me utterly and completely off-guard. I blinked the tears from my eyes as I once again settled my gaze upon Sar'vana. Like an angel, there was no look of anger in her lovely eyes, no condemnation.
"Who … whom do I…?" I sputtered.
"Whom do you love?" Sar'vana asked again, her voice without any betrayal of judgment.
"Well … you, of course," I said, still amazed that this conversation had even taken such an unforeseen turn. "I've always loved you."
"Are you certain of this?" Sar'vana asked.
"I've never been more certain in my life.
"And are you my li-ah as I am yours?"
I crawled to her, and took her hand in my own.
"Vani … If I had my pick of any woman on this planet, but was denied you, I'd choose celibacy," I said with earnestness that burned from the depths of my heart. "I would be sterilized before I'd choose any other girl. Were it allowed, and were it possible, I would have you bear our children. Li-ah … I've loved you since we were kids. And my only regret is not having had the courage to act on my feelings sooner."
"Then there is nothing to forgive," she whispered.
And just like that, it was over. And as we kissed, all the shame and confusion of the times of the burn vanished at her gentle touch. We fell into the soft sheets, reveling in that joy that I felt at her forgiveness, and sought to bring that joy … and that love … once again, into its fullest expression.
12.12.12: The last time this date, or repetition of dates will occur again until January 1, 2101 (the 01.01.01 of the 22nd Century). The Astronomical Society of the Pacific proclaims today Anti-Doomsday Day. There's a concert for Hurricane Sandy relief.
AGU is the American Geophysical Union. Yesterday, I posted Scientific American's assertion that we've become essentially two camps: scientists and non-scientists, or (I think) more accurately: those who trust The Scientific Method and its conclusions, and those -- for various reason -- who do not.
Dan Satterfield is the author of the blog (link below). He is a meteorologist/weatherman with 32 years of experience.
He advises: read the blog post, then watch the embed Carl Sagan lecture from AGU's annual meeting.
"We've arranged a global civilization in which the most crucial elements — transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting — profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces." Carl Sagan
American Geophysical Union: IPCC Climate Forecast from 1990 - Amazingly Accurate
Astronomical Society of the Pacific: Anti-Doomsday Day
Related links:
#P4TC: Missing In Action
Hey, folks.
I'm looking for some readers for my work, so I can have some critiques. In exchange, I can do critiques of your work. Please let me know if anyone is interested, and I will post a few excerpts. Thanks a million!
-Brandon
Well, real life caused a little bump but we're back on schedule now. The newest "episode" of the GALATEA'S CROSS serial eNovel is available at AMAZON.
There's a little LOOK INSIDE action and you could jump on with #2 but i recommend starting at the beginning. They're only 99 cents and the novel will work as a season of a TV series if you stick with it.
If enough people buy it, I'll do another next year.
AMAZON LINK
Utopia Planitia (Latin: "Nowhere Plain") is the largest recognized impact basin on Mars and in the solar system with an estimated diameter of 3300 km,[1] and is the Martian region where the Viking 2 lander touched down and began exploring on September 3, 1976. It is located at the antipode of Argyre Planitia, centered at 49.7°N 118.0°E. It is in the Casius quadrangle and the Cebrenia quadrangle of Mars.
Many rocks at Utopia Planitia appear perched, as if wind removed much of the soil at their bases.[2][3] A hard surface crust is formed by solutions of minerals moving up through soil and evaporating at the surface.[4] Some areas of the surface exhibit what is called "Scalloped topography," a surface that seems to have been carved out by an ice cream scoop. This surface is thought to have formed by the degradation of an ice-rich permafrost. (Wikipedia) Also known in Star Trek lore, the place for building Federation starships.
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| Utopia Planitia shipyards |
Hence, the appropriate title for the following from Scientific American:
In 1993, Americans elected the first physicist to Congress: Vern Ehlers, a Republican from Michigan. Just six years later, former assistant director of Princeton’s Plasma Physics Laboratory, Rush Holt, a Democrat from New Jersey, joined him. And in 2008, Fermilab physicist and Illinois Democrat Bill Foster joined them, only to lose re-election in 2010 before regaining his seat this year. At that rate, Holt joked to an audience of mostly chemists at Princeton University on November 9, “By mid-century, the population of Congress would be physicists.”
But that’s a “slow way” to inject scientific thinking into the political process, Holt argued. “I wish we could get more Americans and, hence, their representatives thinking like scientists, which means basing our conclusions on evidence,” he said.
That laudable goal may prove even more challenging than turning a physicist into an electrifying political speaker. Because humans are not born statisticians, thinking scientifically is both technically and psychologically challenging . We prefer a story (anecdote!) to a compilation of statistics (data!). The modern world, as Holt observed of C.P. Snow’s famous analysis decades ago, has become divided into two disparate camps: scientists and non-scientists.
This may be most apparent currently on the subject of climate change...“The evidence for climate change is strong enough that we should be taking very bold and very expensive action because the costs of not taking action will be even more expensive,” Holt argued, suggesting that legislation to combat climate change “probably will be undertaken again, I would guess relatively soon in the next Congress.”
Scientific American:
Representative Rush Holt's Advice to His Fellow Scientists on Politics
David Biello
So, I'm kinda a n00b here, but I decided that this would be a good way to get the word out about my stories. I'm a published author with 3 e-books on the way. The first is "From Slate to Crimson," a steamy romance involving a vampire and the human he falls in love with. The second is "The Hidden Meanings," a bittersweet detective story, the first in a series of stories I call "The World of Five Nations," a mash-up of fantasy and sci-fi in a world where technology and magic intermingle, where dragons and elves exist alongside humans and androids. The third is Elven Roses, a romance set many years later, involving the controversial relationship between an mysterious elf and an obselete android.
This has been a banner year for me as a writer, and I hope to share my works with all of you, as well as interacting with others in this group. Look forward to more!
-Brandon
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| Optics and Photonics |
Usually, if you blast enough light into an insulator, it will blow up quickly or break down slowly. But today, a pair of papers published in Nature describe using very intense femtosecond laser pulses that not only do not damage the material, but also induce electrical currents in an otherwise insulating dielectric—specifically a fused silica prism (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature11567; Nature, Advanced DOI: 10.1038/nature11720).
The work is exciting because insulators that can quickly change into conductors (and back into insulators again) could be used for signal switching. Today's fastest semiconductor switching is measured in terahertz, but light-induced switching in insulators, such as demonstrated in these papers, could work at petahertz rates—more than 10,000 times the rate of current electronics. In the near-term, it could also make possible petahertz (1015 hertz) metrology.
Optics an Photonics: Ultrafast Light Turns Insulator into a Conductor, Yvonne Carts-Powell
In 12 days...it will be the Winter Solstice for the northern hemisphere.
It will be the shortest day on the calendar; five days before Christmas/Saturnalia/Yuletide, Kwanzaa: it will be three days post the end of Hanukkah. It will be as it's always been.
Then, as it always has (and always will for some time), the days will start getting incrementally longer. Spring will arrive, temperatures will warm and flowers will blossom. We'll have to deal with the weather: post Katrina, post Rita, post Irene, post Sandy.
There is an eventual end of things just as there is an eventual end of us as living creatures.
Times arrow is orchestrated by entropy: the tendency for things to go from order to disorder, from hard, strong and young to the latter opposite as we age. Due to entropy, you can smell perfume sprayed out of a bottle (otherwise, it would either drop ungracefully in a lump on the floor, or never leave its container).
I am concerned...and saddened that so many young are led by this media hype to dread the future; to contemplate Hamlet's soliloquy. You have so much to live for...discover...enjoy. I lived with doomsday clocks and duck-and-cover drills due to a Soviet threat that now no longer exists.
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| Merry-go-round |
I urge educators and parents to share the contents of the link below with your children. When the young are injured by myth as credible as Y2K was for spin, sport or ratings...it is no longer a game!
The surest cure to manipulated ignorance...is knowledge.
David Morrison
Director, Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe
NASA Senior Scientist
There is widespread and unnecessary fear of doomsday on December 21, 2012. Some people worry about a Maya prophesy of the end of the world, others fear a variety of astronomical threats such as collision with a rogue planet. Opinion polls suggest that one in ten Americans worry about whether they will survive past Dec 21 of this year, and middle-school teachers everywhere report that many of their students are fearful of a coming apocalypse.
SETI Institute: Doomsday 2012 Factsheet
