Speech reconstructed from brain activity
Yes, scientists can now scan your mind and record what you’re hearing. How long before they can scan your mind and know what you’re thinking?
Read a whole article on this fascinating find on the Scientific American site and watch a video of the technology in action below:
Further reading also available at BBC News
An encounter with our cousins once removed
This will probably be the most amazing thing you’ll see for a while. But if you think we’re referring to an encounter with the Derrenite dynasty of Clan Brown, you’ll be sorely disappointed (or not, depends?). What you’ll see below, and we do urge you to watch, is footage of a troop of wild mountain gorillas in Uganda, marching through a tourist camp as if they own the place, sitting down for a snack next to a stunned tourist before moving on. These are our second closest living relatives after the chimpanzee, since our common ancestors with the gorillas diverged about 7 million years ago and about 5 million for chimps. We share 95-99% of the same DNA.
Now, we say wild, but these gorillas in Uganda are exposed to human tourists all year long. With only about 750 of the heavily endangered mountain gorillas left, tourism is the only way to pay for the rangers needed to protect the animals from encroaching urban interference and the witchdoctors or poachers that sell the gorilla body parts for use in “magical” potions. It was also common to eat the great apes, before conservationists were able to end this practice.
The gorillas in the video are called the Rushegura troop and consist of a harem of females (the moderate sized black apes), a ton of toddlers of various sizes and one giant male silverback (you will know him when you see him, trust us). As you’ll notice, the silverback is perhaps three-or four times the size of the females! “Why?”, a male visitor might ask in a trembling, thin voice so his 7ft tall 280lbs silverback wife won’t hear him from the couch. Well, as you suspect the males have to fight for domination of the harems. Hence evolution has favoured an ongoing arms-race between males that resulted in them growing steadily bigger. The rationale being that randomly born larger males won more fights, had more sex and hence their own male offspring also got the genes for being larger. Whilst females, not encumbered with this tiresome competitive boasting, could stay nice and small so they in theory could still catcha cab to a theatre in Britain to see Derren’s awesome Svengali show (hint, hint).
As a result, a silverback gorilla in his prime, as the specimen in the video certainly seems to be, is not only huge, but also has the estimated strength of around 10 to 20 strong human men! Don’t believe us? Look at the video and pay special attention to the mass of muscles on the silverback. These amazing animals have been observed casually snapping giant bamboo stalks, equivalent to the strength of two inch steel bars, like twigs. Imagine what it could do to your parents in law? Luckily (for your parents in law) these are rather meek non-violent creatures, and if you treat them with respect, no looking in the eyes, stay low, still and submissive, you’ll be absolutely fine as the video will show you.
What a wonderful and terrifying experience this must have been. To have those little gorillas crawl all over you, kissing your face (sublime!) whilst their dad, a massive silverback 50 times your strength (the guy is kinda feeble, OK?) is having a little rest right behind you, keeping a protective eye on his brood and you…
For a somewhat higher quality video visit the Whyevolutionistrue blog of biologist and author Jerry Coyne, who wrote an amazing book on evolution called “Why Evolution is True”.
Exceptionally beautiful video of DNA wrapping and replicating
In the video below we take a look at the beautiful and rather psychedelic world of intracellular life. These animated images show in stunning detail how molecules containing the genetic instructions that form life, DNA, fold up to form chromosomes (46 compact packages of genetic material) so the cell can divide. Cell division is of course necessary for creatures to grow or to replace older cells in bodies. More importantly we need some of those chromosomes to share our genetic material and to produce a next generation of Derren-loving hairless apes.
In total there is 6 feet (1,8 meters) of DNA in every single one of our 50 trillion or so cells. They would, if you put all of these strands of DNA together in some mad and evil experiment, reach to the sun….and back… for over four times! How’s that for some juicy facts to impress a crowd of your choosing?
You’ll also see how the DNA is split and copied from one original strand in the first place. In a rather roundabout (literally) way, you will agree.
The video is especially powerful for highlighting some of the more ‘random’ elements of our inner workings. Amino-acids and proteins move around in a cell like tiny drunken sheep, intoxicated by small atomic forces and just bump in to each other, after which which their unromantic mechanical coupling begins to start the chain reaction leading to folding, replicating and a thousand other functions. No direction, no mind, just a jittery recombination of atoms that complements each other. So stunning and enthralling, we just call it life.
Thanks to It’s Okay To Be Smart for pointing out this lovely video. Find a longer version, with more of the stunning animations below:
The Debunking Handbook
There’s a very strong likelihood that if you’re reading this you’re either:
a) a rational skeptic
b) a trojan spiritualist
c) a fan of Derren Brown
Good news then that all three will find something to enjoy in The Debunking Handbook, an Ebook that is free to download courtesy of skepticalscience.com, a website that focuses primarily on explaining what peer-reviewed science has to say about global warming.
They describe it thus:
“Although there is a great deal of psychological research on misinformation, there’s no summary of the literature that offers practical guidelines on the most effective ways of reducing the influence of myths.
The Debunking Handbook boils the research down into a short, simple summary, intended as a guide for communicators in all areas (not just climate) who encounter misinformation.”
Feel free to go grab your copy of The Debunking Handbook and then come back here to let us know what you think. It shouldn’t take you long, it’s only seven pages long.
Souce: Lifehacker
(Thanks to DG for the scoop)
Matrix-Style Learning Infiltrates Your Mind
“While it may not help you learn how to Kung Fu fight or fly a B212 Helicopter, a neurofeedback method of learning is reminiscent of something we might have seen in the movie, The Matrix.
The technique would provide more immediate and long-lasting knowledge in tasks that demand a significant level of visual performance, like hitting a curve ball or learning to play the piano.
Researchers from Boston University (BU) and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan recently demonstrated that they could induce brain activity patterns to match a targeted state by decoding a person’s functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan of their visual cortex.
In the future, researchers envision a person watching a computer screen and having their brain patterns manipulated to match those of a desired level of task performance, perhaps of an athlete or someone healing from an accident or disease.
Their findings were published in the most recent issue of Science.
“Adult early visual areas are sufficiently plastic to cause visual perceptual learning,” lead author and BU neuroscientist Takeo Watanabe said in a National Science Foundation press release.
However, there is one wrinkle in this Matrix-style approach to learning: the method worked on subjects even when they weren’t aware of what they were learning.
“We found that subjects were not aware of what was to be learned while behavioral data obtained before and after the neurofeedback training showed that subjects’ visual performance improved specifically for the target orientation,” Watanabe said.
Fascinating — sure — but this does open up the door to hypnosis and mind control, which Watanabe is keenly aware of.
“We have to be careful,” he said, “so that this method is not used in an unethical way.” Sounds like a good plot line for the next Matrix movie.”
Via Discovery News (Thanks Annette)
Out-of-body experience: Master of illusion
“Henrik Ehrsson uses mannequins, rubber arms and virtual reality to create body illusions, all in the name of neuroscience.
It is not every day that you are separated from your body and then stabbed in the chest with a kitchen knife.
But such experiences are routine in the lab of Henrik Ehrsson, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, who uses illusions to probe, stretch and displace people’s sense of self. Today, using little more than a video camera, goggles and two sticks, he has convinced me that I am floating a few metres behind my own body. As I see a knife plunging towards my virtual chest, I flinch. Two electrodes on my fingers record the sweat that automatically erupts on my skin, and a nearby laptop plots my spiking fear on a graph.
Out-of-body experiences are just part of Ehrsson’s repertoire. He has convinced people that they have swapped bodies with another person1, gained a third arm2, shrunk to the size of a doll or grown to giant proportions3. The storeroom in his lab is stuffed with mannequins of various sizes, disembodied dolls’ heads, fake hands, cameras, knives and hammers. It looks like a serial killer’s basement. “The other neuroscientists think we’re a little crazy,” Ehrsson admits.
But Ehrsson’s unorthodox apparatus amount to more than cheap trickery. They are part of his quest to understand how people come to experience a sense of self, located within their own bodies. The feeling of body ownership is so ingrained that few people ever think about it — and those scientists and philosophers who do have assumed that it was unassailable.”
Read more at Nature.com (Thanks Annette)
GCHQ challenges codebreakers via social networks
“UK intelligence agency GCHQ has launched a code-cracking competition to help attract new talent.
The organisation has invited potential applicants to solve a visual code posted at an unbranded standalone website.
The challenge has also been “seeded” to social media sites, blogs and forums.
A spokesman said the campaign aimed to raise the profile of GCHQ to an audience that would otherwise be difficult to reach.
“The target audience for this particular campaign is one that may not typically be attracted to traditional advertising methods and may be unaware that GCHQ is recruiting for these kinds of roles,” the spokesman said.
“Their skills may be ideally suited to our work and yet they may not understand how they could apply them to a working environment, particularly one where they have the opportunity to contribute so much.”
The competition began in secret on 3 November and will continue until 12 December.
GCHQ said that once the code was cracked individuals would be presented with a keyword to enter into a form field. They would then be redirected to the agency’s recruitment website.
The organisation said it was not worried that the problem’s answer might be spread around the internet.
It said it would still benefit because the resulting discussion would “generate future recruitment enquiries”.
However, it added that anyone who had previously hacked illegally would be ineligible. The agency’s website also states that applicants must be British citizens.”
Read more at BBC News (Thanks @siobha)
‘Jet Man’ Flies In Formation Over Alps
“A self-styled “jet man” has performed another death-defying stunt – flying alongside two Albatross aircraft above the Swiss Alps. Adventurer Yves Rossy flew in a custom-built jet suit over the mountain range in formation with the aircraft. Rossy, 51, launched himself from the side of a helicopter before taking his place alongside the two jets high above the Alps.
The daredevil – who used to fly fighter jets with the Swiss airforce – wears a jet suit which has a wing span of two metres. The pack weighs around 120lb and is fitted with four engines that enable him to travel at speeds in excess of 125mph. Once the flight was completed, the adventurer safely parachuted back down to the ground.
Rossy is still the first man in the history of aviation to fly with a jet-propelled wing, a feat he first achieved in 2006. In May 2008, he flew in his suit over the Swiss Alps for the first time and then crossed the English Channel later that year. Since then, he has worked on the design of his jet-pack which has led to his first formation flights and acrobatics.”
Read more at Sky (Thanks Annette)
Would you wear a bionic contact lens to read emails?
“Fans of the Terminator franchise may be thrilled but others may be confused over just what a bionic contact lens adds to humanity. According to the developers at Washington University, users could view floating emails and text messages as well as augment their sight with computer-generated images. They say it has been successfully tested on animals (presumably those with email accounts) and when problems such as finding a decent power source are ironed out it could be ready for market.
Is this what the world has been waiting for – or is technology bringing us a load of pointless new kit? What, given a top team of boffins and a whopping budget, would be the innovation of the future you’d like to see?”
Via Guardian (Thanks Annette)
Scientists Develop World’s Lightest Metal, 100x Lighter than Styrofoam
“This, we assure you, is a real photograph. Researchers at the University of California Irvine have developed a material that is as strong as metal but 100 times lighter than Styrofoam. The material is constructed from a micro-lattice of nickel phosphorous tubes that is 99.9% air. The tubes are hollow and have walls 1,000 times thinner than a human hair yet have the strength of metal with the added benefit of being ultra resistant to strain. Researchers believe this new metal could be used to make light weight batteries that could eventually bring down the weight, and increase the efficiency, of green vehicles and use less material in the process.”
Read more at Inhabitat (Thanks Sally)
