December 28, 2008 by sean.

LiveScience.com explores brain prosthetics, artificial cells, regrown bone, wearbale kidneys and even new corpora cavernosa [you’ll have to look it up] in Top 10 Technologies for the Bionic Human.

Posted in science, bionics | No Comments »

December 28, 2008 by sean.

Dr. Jerald Block writes in the latest issue of the American Journal Of Psychiatry that “people who send large numbers of text messages and emails may have a mental disorder” [via smh.com.au]:

“[I]nternet addiction” was a “common disorder” that deserved inclusion in a manual of mental disorders used by health professionals.

Those with the condition suffered withdrawal symptoms of anger and tension when a computer was inaccessible, and often lost their sense of time through excessive use… Other symptoms included feeling “the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use”, and having arguments, lying, social isolation and fatigue.”

Posted in science, pervasive computing | No Comments »

December 28, 2008 by sean.

Allen Institute for Brain Science encouraging open collaboration and personal philantropy re: brain research [via economist.com]:

Clearly the model of providing a freely accessible database is a successful one. In a sense, we have challenged other researchers to offer greater access to their findings. Will they take the challenge? My bet is that over the next 18 months we are going to see more open access and more collaboration.

In the next decade we will make great strides in uncovering the complex network of gene interactions that govern every major brain disease and will create effective therapies through traditional drug discovery or new methods for modifying gene activity. Just as the use of cardiac pacemakers or artificial knees is common today, a new generation of implantable pacemakers for the brain will be widely used to treat everything from depression to addiction and Parkinson’s disease.

Our increasing knowledge will shed light on how information is processed and stored in the human brain at a molecular level. Even now, scientists are already mimicking the brain’s information-processing capabilities to create a new generation of computer processes. We are going to get far better at this as our understanding of the brain improves.

Private philanthropy will continue to grow and help to accelerate scientific discovery. I believe we are nearing a tipping-point in brain research where the discoveries, treatments and cures will come more quickly than the questions. Private dollars, combined with broader adoption of open collaboration and data-sharing models, will help push us over the top. Success will follow.

Posted in science, neuroscience, collective intelligence, social networks | No Comments »

December 26, 2008 by sean.

Researchers at Northwestern University show that insufficient glucose may be tied to Alzheimers [via livescience.com]:

[W]hen the brain doesn’t get enough of the simple sugar called glucose — as might occur when cardiovascular disease restricts blood flow in arteries to the brain — a process is launched that ultimately produces the sticky clumps of protein that appear to be a cause of Alzheimer’s…

“This finding is significant because it suggests that improving blood flow to the brain might be an effective therapeutic approach to prevent or treat Alzheimer’s,” Vassar said.

The best ways to improve blood flow to the brain and thereby reduce the chances of getting Alzheimer’s is to reduce cholesterol intake, manage high blood pressure and exercise, especially entering mid-life.

Posted in neuroscience | No Comments »

December 26, 2008 by sean.

New findings re: regeneration of brain tissue [via dailygalaxy.com]:

Contrary to popular belief, recent studies have found that there are probably ways to regenerate brain matter.

Animal studies conducted at the National Institute on Aging Gerontology Research Center and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, for example, have shown that both calorie restriction and intermittent fasting along with vitamin and mineral intake, increase resistance to disease, extend lifespan, and stimulate production of neurons from stem cells.

In addition, fasting \ has been shown to enhance synaptic elasticity, possibly increasing the ability for successful re-wiring following brain injury. These benefits appear to result from a cellular stress response, similar in concept to the greater muscular regeneration that results from the stress of regular exercise.

Physical exercise may also have beneficial effects on neuron regeneration by stimulating regeneration of brain and muscle cells via activation of stress proteins and the production of growth factors. But again, additional research suggests that not all exercise is equal. Interestingly, some researchers found that exercise considered drudgery was not beneficial in neuronal regeneration, but physical activity that was engaged in purely for fun, even if equal time was spent and equal calories were burned, resulted in neuronal regeneration.

Exercise can also help reduce stress, but any stress-reducing activity, such as meditation and lifestyle changes, can help the brain. There is some evidence that chronic stress shrinks the parts of the brain involved in learning, memory, and mood. (It also delays wound healing, promotes atherosclerosis, and increases blood pressure.)

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December 23, 2008 by sean.

A team of international brain researchers report on “so-called blindsight, the native ability to sense things using the brain’s primitive, subcortical — and entirely subconscious — visual system” [via New York Times].

Scientists have previously reported cases of blindsight in people with partial damage to their visual lobes. The new report is the first to show it in a person whose visual lobes — one in each hemisphere, under the skull at the back of the head — were completely destroyed. The finding suggests that people with similar injuries may be able to recover some crude visual sense with practice…

Scientists have long known that the brain digests what comes through the eyes using two sets of circuits. Cells in the retina project not only to the visual cortex — the destroyed regions in this man — but also to subcortical areas, which in T. N. were intact. These include the superior colliculus, which is crucial in eye movements and may have other sensory functions; and, probably, circuits running through the amygdala, which registers emotion…

In time, and with practice, people with brain injuries may learn to lean more heavily on such subconscious or semiconscious systems, and perhaps even begin to construct some conscious vision from them.

“It’s not clear how sharp it would be,” Dr. Held said. “Probably a vague, low-resolution spatial sense. But it might allow them to move around more independently.”

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December 23, 2008 by sean.

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December 23, 2008 by sean.

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December 20, 2008 by sean.

Colorado Springs doctor finds a small foot and intestines inside the brain of a newborn [via denverchannel.com]:

Dr. Paul Grabb, a pediatric brain surgeon, said he was surprised when he discovered a small foot growing inside the brain of 3-day-old Sam Esquibel.

“The foot literally popped out of the brain,” Grabb told TheDenverChannel Wednesday.

The appendage threatened the newborn’s life.

When Grabb performed the life-saving surgery at Memorial Hospital for Children in Colorado Springs, he was in for another surprise: he also found what appeared to be parts of an intestine in the folds of the infant’s tiny brain, in addition to another developing foot, hand and thigh.

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December 19, 2008 by sean.

This process is the mechanism by which the brain regulates these networks from uncontrolled growth, however; as a consequence, the central nervous system is unable to reorganize itself in response to injury or disease.

New research suggests that re-generation of neurons may not weaken with age, rather the protien capain may hinder re-growth [via xxx]:

“This discovery is exciting because we now know that neurons haven’t lost their capacity to re-grow connections, but instead are under constant repression by the protein calpain,” says Ana Mingorance-Le Meur, postdoctoral fellow in [The University of British Columbia’s] Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences, who has led the investigation along with UBC Professor Timothy O’Connor. “If we can target therapies that block this mechanism, then neurons should be able to sprout new connections, therefore stimulating the brain’s ability to repair its wiring network.”

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December 18, 2008 by sean.

University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists building a “cognitive computer” [via physorg.com]:

The idea is to create a computer capable of sorting through multiple streams of changing data, to look for patterns and make logical decisions…

There’s another requirement: The finished cognitive computer should be as small as a the brain of a small mammal and use as little power as a 100-watt light bulb. It’s a major challenge. But it’s what our brains do every day…

(T)he ideal artificial brain will need to be plastic, meaning it is capable of changing as it learns from experience. The design will likely convey information using electrical impulses modeled on the spiking neurons found in mammal brains. And advances in nanotechnology should allow a small artificial brain to contain as many artificial neurons as a small mammal brain.

Posted in innovation, neuroscience, learning theory, software | No Comments »

December 18, 2008 by sean.

Interesting–yet polemical–article on scientists who advocate use of “cognitive-enhancing drugs” [via mercatornet]:

Nature conducted an informal survey earlier this year which found that about one in five scientists was using them for help in concentrating or memorising. Although most did not use stimulants, 80 percent defended the right to use them.

Dr Campbell and his colleagues calmly counter and dismiss the obvious objections to their zany proposal: that these drugs are not safe, that parents will force feed their children, that peer pressure will compel people to use them, that poor people can’t afford them and so on. Like all new technologies, cognitive enhancement can be used well or poorly. We should welcome new methods of improving our brain function, they explain.

Even though a couple of the authors have links to pharmaceutical companies, their ultimate goal is not making money by marketing a Viagra for the brain. Some of the enhancements they propose are not drugs at all, but other new technologies like brain stimulation and prosthetic brain chips. Rather, it is to promote the notion of human enhancement, or as it is sometimes called, transhumanism. One of the article’s co-authors is a British transhumanist, John Harris, who seems to have been anointed as Nature’s house ideologue. A sign of the increasing credibility of this idea is that he was described recently by the London Times as one of the “top fifty people who influence the way we eat, exercise and think about ourselves” and one of the world’s top three bioethicists.

Posted in neuroscience, augmented cognition | No Comments »

December 17, 2008 by sean.

“(A) European endeavor called the Nepomuk Project will soon see the effort take new steps onto the PC in the form of a ‘semantic desktop‘…software that can spot meaningful connections between the files on a computer (by generating) semantic information by using ‘crawlers’ to go through a computer and annotate as many files as possible. These crawlers look through a user’s address book, for example, and search for files related to the people found in there. Nepomuk can then connect a file sent by a particular person with one related to the company that person works for.”

Posted in innovation, software | No Comments »

December 14, 2008 by sean.

Posted in science, user-created content, social networks | No Comments »

December 14, 2008 by sean.

“British archaeologists have unearthed an ancient skull carrying a startling surprise — an unusually well-preserved brain. Scientists said Friday that the mass of gray matter was more than 2,000 years old — the oldest ever discovered in Britain. One expert unconnected with the find called it ‘a real freak of preservation.’” [via Yahoo News]

Posted in science, neuroscience | No Comments »

December 13, 2008 by sean.

University of Illinois research on the effects of video games on cognitive functions [via Medical News Today]:

A desire to rule the world may be a good thing if you’re over 60 and worried about losing your mental faculties. A new study found that adults in their 60s and 70s can improve a number of cognitive functions by playing a strategic video game that rewards nation-building and territorial expansion….

There was a correlation between their performance on the game and their improvement on certain cognitive tests, Kramer said.

Those who did well in the game also improved the most on switching between tasks. They also tended to do better on tests of working memory.

“In medical terminology, these would be dose-response effects,” Kramer said. “The more drug - or in this case the more training on the video game - the more benefit.”

The findings are meaningful, Basak said, because they show that multi-dimensional training can affect many individual components of cognitive function.

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December 12, 2008 by sean.

Researchers use EEG to determine if “(b)abies as young as six months old can spot mathematical errors” [via bbc news]:

Writing in PNAS, the team led by Dr Andrea Berger of Ben Gurion University of Negev, said: “This study demonstrates that this error detection system may be present in the brains of infants and is activated when they are surprised by an incorrect arithmetic solution.”

Posted in neuroscience, learning theory | No Comments »

December 4, 2008 by sean.

Excellent short film introducing Guy Kawasaki’s new book Reality Check and the relationship between innovation and evangelism [crowdsourced marketing]:

Posted in innovation, social networks | No Comments »

December 1, 2008 by sean.

Posted in games and simulations, fun, augmented cognition | No Comments »

November 27, 2008 by sean.

Voice navigation takes a step forward with the new Google iPhone app:

Posted in software, augmented cognition, mobile computing | No Comments »

November 25, 2008 by sean.

The Bionic Brain slides from the DevLearn 2008 conference are now available on patternhunter.com.

Posted in work, pervasive computing, augmented cognition, collective intelligence, mobile computing | No Comments »

November 19, 2008 by sean.

More on “brain training” [via techradar]:

Researchers at the Universite de Montreal found that cognitive workouts for athletes can boost their reaction speeds by up to 53 per cent.

Professor Jocelyn Faubert put a dozen football, tennis and hockey players through multiple object-tracking exercises, then measured their ability to absorb and manage lots of information simultaneously.

Posted in games and simulations, science, neuroscience, bionics | No Comments »

November 18, 2008 by sean.

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November 18, 2008 by sean.

Researchers use game theory to explain how natural selection can prevent individuals in a species from evolving toward a single optimum personality [via PhysOrg]:

“More generally, the question of ‘why personality variation evolves’ requires a more complex answer, which we’re only just starting to unravel as evolutionary biologists,” [Sasha Dall of the University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus] said. “The chances are that there isn’t just one reason, and which particular reason is relevant depends on the context.

So far, our social awareness reason is one of the few that has been proposed to explain variation in a cooperative context. Social awareness also appears to work in an aggressive context: individuals adopt consistent levels of aggression to avoid getting in real fights, since if someone can predict you’re going to be aggressive, they will avoid provoking you; individual differences arise via frequency dependence again, as the more aggression there is around you, the less you should bother fighting – this is the famous Hawk-Dove game outcome.”

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November 16, 2008 by sean.

Scientists [and others] debate the value and results of “brain training” games [via Times Online]:

Susanne Jaeggi, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, may be able to help. She has devised a brain-training game that actually works. It’s a strange, complex game involving sequences of squares on a computer screen, and it definitely improves “fluid intelligence” — the part of your mind that deals directly with the raw newness of experience or, as defined by Jaeggi, “the ability to reason and to solve new problems independently of previously acquired knowledge”.

And there is some evidence that the games in MindFit (mindweavers.com ) do work. Baroness (Susan) Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution, says it does. Short-term memory and basic reaction time are said to be improved by 20 minutes’ play three times a week.

The brain is not, as the brain trainers like to say, a muscle. It is a 1.3-kilogram crème caramel-like mix of fat, water and proteins driven by electricity and chemicals called neurotransmitters. As far as we know, it is, unless it belongs to Kerry Katona, the most complex thing in the universe. It’s made to last, at best, about 100 years. It shrinks and deteriorates with age. By the time you’re 30 you’re probably past your intellectual peak. This is a problem, as we’re living longer and longer, and the danger is that we’ll just get stupider and stupider.

…while others are asking, Is Google making us stupid? [via searchengineland]:

Remapping neural circuitry? Reprogramming the memory! One gets the picture of a gremlin armed with wire cutters and a chain saw, having their way with our cortex. But the fact is, “remapping” and “reprogramming” happens every day. If it didn’t, you’d never remember your phone number or where you lived. The forging of new neural connections and the pruning of old ones are the basic functions of our brains. It’s how our brain works.

But the UCLA findings might indicate something more permanent, something related to the recent discovery that neuroplasticity, once thought to only be present in the very young, is now known to be a property of our brains throughout our lives. By the way, Small’s other work does show a significant divide between the online skills of the young (Digital Natives) and older generations (Digital Immigrants).

First of all, let’s understand how we learn. Learning involves creating new neuronal firing paths. Basically, as we learn we increase the potential of neurons responsible for storing the new knowledge to fire together. Donald Hebbs called it “fire together, wire together”. Each time the network of neurons fires, the potential to fire again is increased. That’s why things get easier, the more we do them.

Speaking of Dr. Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and author of iBrain, he and his colleagues [via UCLA Newsroom]…

have found that for computer-savvy middle-aged and older adults, searching the Internet triggers key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning. The findings demonstrate that Web search activity may help stimulate and possibly improve brain function…

“The study results are encouraging, that emerging computerized technologies may have physiological effects and potential benefits for middle-aged and older adults,” said principal investigator Dr. Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA who holds UCLA’s Parlow-Solomon Chair on Aging. “Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function.”

And with all of this neuro-enhancement going on, others are learning more about how the brain sleeps [via Scientific American]:

If you’re too tired to think straight, it might be because parts of your brain are already asleep at the wheel. A team of neuroscientists from Washington State University is challenging the belief that a specific region of the brain makes the call to hit the sack. Instead, our brains power down in stages, the researchers say. If a certain group of cells in our brain gets fatigued, it simply shuts off. Surrounding areas respond in kind and also begin to doze. Once a critical mass of gray matter reaches this point, our brain calls it a day. The research will appear in the December issue of the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

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November 14, 2008 by sean.

New report on medical applications of brain-computer interfaces via eurekalerts]:

Scientists have shown for the first time that neuroprosthetic brain implants may be able to help stroke patients with partial paralysis.

Researchers found that implants known as brain-computer interfaces (BCI) may be able to detect activity on one side of the brain that is linked to hand and arm movements on the same side of the body. They hope to use these signals to guide motorized assistance mechanisms that restore mobility in partially paralyzed limbs.

Posted in neuroscience, bionics | No Comments »

November 12, 2008 by sean.

The future-predicting technology that drives the premise of the sci-fi blockbuster Minority Report is silly at best. And when the film hit theaters in 2002, the gadgets seemed pretty unrealistic, too. But eerily enough the slew of dreamed-up gizmos showed off throughout John Anderton’s daring escape are hardening into reality. [via wired]:

Posted in scifi, fun, pervasive computing | No Comments »

November 11, 2008 by sean.

One step closer to the bionic eye [via govtech]:

Engineers at the University of Washington have developed contact lenses with integrated circuitry. The lenses have the same properties as traditional contacts and were worn by lab rabbits for 20-minute stretches without displaying ill effects. A possible use for such lenses might be personal displays. Drivers could see vehicle information or wearers could access their own private video display and surf the Web or watch movies. The circuitry is made of metal strands less than 10 nanometers wide — thinner than a hair strand. Engineers are also working on integrating LEDs into the bionic lenses to enhance the lenses’ display capabilities.

Posted in science, bionics | No Comments »

November 9, 2008 by sean.

Right out of an early William Gibson cyberpunk novel, doctors are testing clectronic implants and electromagnetic pulses to address failures of psychoactive drugs to treat depression [via ieee spectrum]:

Depression is distressingly common, affecting more than 120 million people around the world and sucking tens of billions of dollars out of the global economy through the cost of care and lost productivity. It’s also deadly. Every year 850 000 people worldwide take their own lives, and 9 out of 10 of them are suffering from depression, another mental illness, or substance abuse. Statistics show that of those who had had treatment for depression just through visits to a doctor’s office, 2 percent ultimately committed suicide, as did 4 percent of those who had to be hospitalized for depression.

Twenty-five percent of people with depression have no access to any form of mental health care; of those who do have access to care, only a quarter seek treatment. Of those who consult doctors, some 80 percent find relief in the form of drugs or some kind of talk therapy, such as cognitive therapy… But some of these methods [for electrically manipulating specific portions of the brain with implanted electrodes, electric current, or magnetic fields] are already showing great promise for treating such other mental maladies as bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and bulimia…

[V]agus nerve stimulation [is a] pacemakerlike device about the size of a pocket watch, implanted under the skin of the chest… that [uses] electric pulsing [that] completely quashes the symptoms of depression [in about 16 percent of patients]. It was approved as a depression therapy, for use in conjunction with drugs, by government regulators in the European Union and Canada in 2001. Last June, it became the first psychiatric device to be reviewed and approved in the United States, which has more stringent requirements for medical devices. Nevertheless, a number of psychiatrists remain unconvinced that the therapy works in enough people to outweigh the risk and cost of surgery.

Posted in science, neuroscience | No Comments »

November 8, 2008 by sean.

When the recently deceased Michael Crichton wrote about cloning dead animals in 1991’s Jurassic Park it was still science fiction [via MailOnline]:

Scientists have created clones of a mouse that had been dead and frozen for 16 years.

It is the first time they have been able to clone a frozen animal.

The Japanese researchers say their work will benefit mankind - and could be used to bring back extinct animals such as the woolly mammoth or sabre tooth tiger.

Posted in scifi, science | No Comments »

November 2, 2008 by sean.

David Spark catalogs some great “Twitter moments” that demonstrate some unique advantages of microblogging [via mashable]:

Being a Twitter user (@dspark) for some time now, I like many others have become evangelical about the micro-blogging tool.

I believe what makes Twitter so valuable are these moments of connectivity that simply aren’t possible through any other communications tool. I’ve had these “Twitter moments” and I set out to discover “Twitter moments” from others as well. What all the following stories have in common is a Twitter user had a question or a concern, and someone (or many people) responded. Twitter was the connective tissue that made that moment happen in a time of need.

Speaking of Twitter trends, Bruno Peeters created the following graph…

based on the twitterers I found from Belgium (over 200), my home country. Each Belgian twitterer is indicated as an ellipse, all other twitterers (over 500) are represented as a dot.

There are twitterers from Belgium using their mother tongue (Dutch or French). Others however prefer to use English. These twitterers are far more often connected to other twitterers from all over the world. Interesting enough, there are quite a few twitterers who are not connected at all to other persons on the Twitter platform. If a graph is based on friends, these persons will be missed.

Posted in software, collective intelligence, mobile computing, social networks | No Comments »

October 30, 2008 by sean.

Steven Levy explores Augmented Reality and the Mirror World [via wired]:

[T]he iPhone’s multitouch interface shows the way to harness the Web’s annotations to our physical reality — information about every nail salon, every cul-de-sac, and every person has piled up in what computer scientist David Gelernter calls a “mirror world.” Apple cracked the code that previously made it difficult for mobile users to access this data-rich alternate stratum. (Microsoft hopes to match Apple on this front as its own Surface multitouch technology spreads across tables, plasma screens, and mobile devices.)

We once talked about cyberspace as a distant cosmos, a digital outland that left the physical world behind. An iconic representation of it appeared in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, in which a pizza-delivery guy was the hero of an artificial world known as the Metaverse. This year, breakthroughs like the Wii, Guitar Hero, and the iPhone showed that 21st-century reality is a blend of the digital and physical, with a borderline so blurred it’s not really a line at all.

Posted in pervasive computing, augmented cognition, mobile computing | No Comments »

October 29, 2008 by sean.

I admit, I HATE [lugging, troubleshooting, paying money for] laptops! Apparently, I am not alone [via the apple blog]:

One point which seems to have a great deal of validity is the idea that travelers are now ditching their desktops in favor of laptops, and using their smartphone to achieve what was previously done on a laptop. While this doesn’t hold true for everyone, it is a trend which seems to be slowly emerging.

With the iPhone, Apple has taken an authoritative position in this new market — a notion backed up with statistics:

In a survey of 460 iPhone users from March by Rubicon Consulting Inc., more than 28% of respondents strongly agreed and 29% mildly agreed when asked whether the iPhone was replacing their use of laptops.

Posted in mobile computing | No Comments »

October 20, 2008 by sean.

In addition to “”(f)requent social interactions, regular exercise and maintaining a balanced diet can also reduce dementia risk.”", surfing the internet may be good for your brain [via BBC News]:

For middle-aged and older people at least, using the internet helps boost brain power, research suggests. A University of California Los Angeles team found searching the web stimulated centres in the brain that controlled decision-making and complex reasoning. The researchers say this might even help to counteract the age-related physiological changes that cause the brain to slow down.

Posted in neuroscience, software | No Comments »

October 14, 2008 by sean.

Posted in pervasive computing, collective intelligence, mobile computing, social networks | No Comments »

October 14, 2008 by sean.

Psychologists at Northwestern University in Illinois explore the connections between conscious and “unconscious” processing [via telegraph.co.uk]:

A moment spent working on something else or taking a break altogether allows the brain’s unconscious thought process to take over, American psychologists believe. When the brain kicks back into gear, the conscious thought process will pick up on the solution, they found…

Professor Adam Galinsky, who led the study, said: “Conscious thought is better at making linear, analytic decisions, but unconscious thought is especially effective at solving complex problems. Unconscious activation may provide inspirational sparks underlying the ‘Aha!’ moment that eventually leads to important discoveries.”

Posted in learning theory | No Comments »

October 12, 2008 by sean.

Dan Peterson recently published a fascinating article on the psychology of sports:

Another component of “off-target” pitching or throwing is the psychological side of a player’s mental state/attitude. Stadler identifies research that these motor programs can be called up by the brain by current thoughts. There seems to be “good” programs and “bad” programs, meaning the brain has learned how to throw a strike and learned many programs that will not throw a strike. By “seeding” the recall with positive or negative thoughts, the “strike” program may be run, but so to can the “ball” program. So, if a pitcher thinks to himself, “don’t walk this guy”, he may be subconsciously calling up the “ball” program and it will result in a pitch called as a ball. So, this is why sports pscyhologists stress the need to “think positively”, not just for warm and fuzzy feelings, but the brain may be listening and will instruct your body what to do.

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September 29, 2008 by sean.

Via the Cult of Mac:

Posted in mobile computing | No Comments »

September 27, 2008 by sean.

Entertaining look at living in the GooglePlex [via gizmodo]:

The first Android phone is dropping next week, and the people who pick it up will be toting around mobile Google software in their pocket wherever they go. They’ll be using mobile Google apps, probably in concert with using Gmail, Gcal and Google Maps on their normal computer. We know that Google is tossing out all user data after 9 months, but you’ve got to wonder what kind of a picture Google is getting of its heavy users like that when it’s only getting info from how its apps are used. After the jump, an imagined day in the life of a Google user, as recorded and perceived by the Googleplex itself.

Posted in fun, pervasive computing, social networks | No Comments »

September 21, 2008 by sean.

From virtual pets to virtual boyfriends [via techcrunch]:

In Japan, girls are crazy over virtual boyfriends. Webkare (Web Boyfriend in Japanese), a mix between a social network and dating simulation site, is Nippon’s newest web sensation. Geared exclusively towards girls, the site attracted over 10,000 members just 5 days after its release on September 10, racking up 3.5 million page views in the same time frame.

Posted in games and simulations, fun, social networks | No Comments »

September 18, 2008 by sean.

University of Utah biologist Dennis Bramble and Harvard University paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman suggest that efficient running has a role in human evolution [via Discover Magazine]:

In the 1970s, Carrier was assisting with Bramble’s studies of how dogs, horses, and people regulate breathing while running. A marathoner himself, Carrier began to wonder about the role of endurance running in human evolution. People, he noted, can shed heat quickly—not by panting, like most animals, but by perspiring through millions of sweat glands. A lack of fur also helps dissipate heat more quickly.

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September 13, 2008 by sean.

“It just got a bit harder for law enforcement agencies to turn your cell phone into a personal homing beacon: A federal court has slapped down the Justice Department’s appeal of a February ruling that required investigators to seek a probable cause warrant before acquiring historical records of a cell phone users physical movements.” [via arstechnica]

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September 11, 2008 by sean.

[Professor Wolffsohn from Aston University] believes that within five to ten years, people will be able to have their vision premanently repaired for less than £1,000 by having one of these flexible lenses implanted in their eye. [via telegraph.co.uk].

Posted in bionics | No Comments »

September 7, 2008 by sean.

Rap about world’s largest science experiment becomes YouTube hit [via Daily Telegraph]:

After 14 years, the European particle physics lab near Geneva, known by its French acronym CERN, is preparing to switch on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), designed to seek out new particles including the long-awaited Higgs boson responsible for making things weigh what they do, the possible source of gravity called dark matter, as well as probe the differences between matter and its “evil twin” antimatter.

Now a larky but accurate rap song explaining the point of the 17 mile circumference machine, which formally starts up on September 10, has made a star of Kate McAlpine, 23, aka “alpinekat”, who stars with her friends in a YouTube video that has been downloaded more than 400,000 times.

Posted in science, fun | No Comments »

September 6, 2008 by sean.

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August 31, 2008 by sean.

Can someone really recite Pi to 22,514 digits in 5 1/2 hours without making a single mistake and then go on to learn a complex foriegn language [Icelandic no less!] in seven days? See for yourself…

Posted in science, neuroscience | No Comments »

August 31, 2008 by sean.

Amazing talk by Sugata Mitra who planted PCs and touchpads into “wholes in the walls” in rural India where 6-13 year old children not only taught themselves how to browse the internet and run applications on CD-ROMs, but also taught themselves English to better interact with the software. Truly amazing!

Posted in learning theory, software | No Comments »

August 30, 2008 by sean.

The Future of the Internet [via netguide.co.nz]:

Imagine yourself, as an individual, being logged into a computer system that spans the globe. You were given an online identity when your birth was registered and you take it everywhere you go.

The computer system supplies you with the information you need to learn as you grow. It is aware of your needs, and responds to them, whether it’s data for school work, the location of friends and family, where to get basic requirements like food, clothing and shelter, or assistance when in trouble. It stores all of this material in order to understand and help you – it can even anticipate your needs and actions. As you age, it senses your changing priorities and habits, and can offer advice on things you’re doing that may shorten your life, not to mention things you should do that may prolong it. And it definitely understands what you consider fun.

Posted in pervasive computing, software | No Comments »

August 30, 2008 by sean.

Ubiquity is a new platform from Mozilla that currently integrates into Firefox as a plug-in that allows you to do some really amazing things [harder to explain that simply to see] including those featured in this short tutorial / overview:

Posted in software | No Comments »

August 17, 2008 by sean.

Rat brain cells power robot [via livescience.com]:

Scientists have created a robot controlled by a biological brain made of rat neurons.

The robot, named Gordon, is not exactly an Einstein but represents a remarkable bridging of the gap between biology and technology. Gordon relies a dish with about 60 electrodes to pick up electrical signals generated by the brain cells…

“This new research is tremendously exciting as firstly the biological brain controls its own moving robot body, and secondly it will enable us to investigate how the brain learns and memorizes its experiences,” said the university’s Kevin Warwick of the School of Systems Engineering. “This research will move our understanding forward of how brains work, and could have a profound effect on many areas of science and medicine.”

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