Taiwanese Woman Marries Self
“On November 6, Chen will be marrying herself at a special ceremony estimated to cost over NT$50,000 (or $5,675). Ever since opting for this unconventional act, she has received a bevy of attention in the spotlight—not to mention thousands of letters of support from women in similar predicaments.
The problem in Taiwan is that many women are marrying later and later, if at all. This has the government and older generations worried about a possible drop in births and the associated consequences. So in turn parents are constantly pestering their daughters to get married and bear children.
Chen hopes to change this annoying behavior by doing something so revolutionary and crazy that it’ll make parents in Taiwan think twice.
“My work and experience are in good shape, but I haven’t found a partner, so what can I do?” Chen asked. “It’s not that I’m anti-marriage. I just hope that I can express a different idea within a bounds of a tradition.”
And to top it all off, Chen intends on going on a honeymoon with herself to Australia immediately after the wedding.”
Read more at Weird Asia News
How to Plug in a Brain
“For tens of thousands of people suffering from paralysis or neurodegenerative disease, a direct connection to a computer could soon restore speech and even mobility. Neurologist Leigh Hochberg of the VA Medical Center in Providence, Rhode Island, is leading the second clinical trial of a brain-computer link called BrainGate. The system uses a sensor implanted into the motor cortex. Previous studies have shown that BrainGate can allow paralyzed people to perform simple tasks such as moving a computer cursor. The current trial will evaluate its safety outside the lab. Two people are already testing BrainGate at home, using the device to manipulate objects on a computer, and Hochberg hopes to recruit 13 more participants.
Although implants can be placed right next to the relevant neurons in the brain, they have drawbacks. Implants can inflame the surrounding tissue, and scarring can disrupt the connection between neurons and electrodes. A sensor developed by University of Pennsylvania neurologist Brian Litt could address those problems. It consists of electrodes embedded in a flexible plastic mesh that molds to the brain’s surface (but it does not penetrate the gray matter). Litt and his colleagues were able to record neural signals from cats’ brains for a few weeks without causing inflammation. Neuroscientist Gerwin Schalk of the New York State Department of Health has found that test sensors placed on the outside of human brains pick up signals that can identify spoken or imagined words. “The surface is a sweet spot,” he says.”
Read more at Discover (Thanks @XxLadyClaireXx)
The robot that reads your mind to train itself
“Rajesh Rao is a man who believes that the best type of robotic helper is one who can read your mind.
In fact, he’s more than just an advocate of mind-controlled robots; he believes in training them through the power of thought alone.
His team at the Neural Systems Laboratory, University of Washington, hopes to take brain-computer interface (BCI) technology to the next level by attempting to teach robots new skills directly via brain signals.
Robotic surrogates that offer paralyzed people the freedom to explore their environment, manipulate objects or simply fetch things has been the holy grail of BCI research for a long time.
Dr Rao’s team began by programming a humanoid robot with simple behaviours which users could then select with a wearable electroencephalogram (EEG) cap that picked up their brain activity.
The brain generates what is known as a P300, or P3, signal involuntarily, each time it recognizes an object. This signal is caused by millions of neurons firing together in a synchronised fashion.
This has been used by many researchers worldwide to create BCI-based applications that allow users to spell a word, identify images, select buttons in a virtual environment and more recently, even play in an orchestra or send a Twitter message.”
Read more at BBC News (Thanks Gareth E)
Fingers detect typos even when conscious brain doesn’t
“Expert typists are able to zoom across the keyboard without ever thinking about which fingers are pressing the keys. New research from Vanderbilt University reveals that this skill is managed by an autopilot, one that is able to catch errors that can fool our conscious brain.
The research was published in the Oct. 29 issue of Science.
“We all know we do some things on autopilot, from walking to doing familiar tasks like making coffee and, in this study, typing. What we don’t know as scientists is how people are able to control their autopilots,” Gordon Logan, Centennial Professor of Psychology and lead author of the new research, said. “The remarkable thing we found is that these processes are disassociated. The hands know when the hands make an error, even when the mind does not.”
To determine the relationship between the autopilot and the conscious brain, or pilot, and the role of each in detecting errors, Logan and co-author Matthew Crump designed a series of experiments to break the normal connection between what we see on the screen and what our fingers feel as they type.
In the first experiment, Logan and Crump had skilled typists type in words that appeared on the screen and then report whether or not they had made any errors. Using a computer program they created, the researchers either randomly inserted errors that the user had not made or corrected errors the user had made. They also timed the typists’ typing speed, looking for the slowdown that is known to occur when one hits the wrong key. They then asked the typists to evaluate their overall performance.
The researchers found the typists generally took the blame for the errors the program had inserted and took the credit for mistakes the computer had corrected. They were fooled by the program. However, their fingers, as managed by the autopilot, were not – the typists slowed down when they actually made an error, as expected, and did not slow down when a false error appeared on the screen.”
Read more at Lab Spaces (Thanks Johnny5)
A mysterious group of early humans who made tools 55,000 years ahead of their time
Blombos Cave in South Africa may have harbored a group of early humans whose tool-making techniques outpaced those of other groups by many thousands of years. Today scientists announced the discovery of more sophisticated tools from this unusually advanced civilization.
Previously, researchers have found evidence that people who lived in Blombos Cave 75,000 years ago produced jewelry and shell beads that only became common among other groups of humans roughly 30,000 to 20,000 years ago. And now a research team led by Vincent Mourre has more evidence that the people of Blombos were the high-tech civilization of the early human world.
Apparently these people invented a tool-making technique called “pressure flaking,” a way of creating very sharp knives, about 55,000 years before humans elsewhere in the world did it.
Full Story over at io9
