Medicalicious, a blog “written specifically for those who want to learn more about health and fitness,” named us one of their Top 50 Biology Research Blogs in the “Longevity and Aging.” We’re mentioned in such illustrious company as some of my favorite blogs, including Fight Aging!, Singularity Hub, FuturePundit, and more.
Making humanoid robots safe for human interaction
This robot is clearly up to no good.
Humanoid robots will one day be widely deployed in environments such as homes, businesses and cities, which are all built to accommodate adult humans of a certain size and weight. As robots become more common in our lives, it only makes sense that they will take on a humanoid appearance that will enable them to efficiently navigate spaces where humans live, as well as enable humans to interact with them in a manner similar to how we would interact with a biological person.
That said, if we have large, powerful machines working in close proximity to us, we’ll want to make sure there are built-in safeguards that will ensure robots won’t inadvertently cause property destruction or physical harm.
Part of this safeguarding will relate to the physical operation of the robot. For example, robots will require ways to measure contact pressure to know when it is being touched and how much pressure is being applied, as well as how much pressure it exerts when it holds something.
More interesting, however, is the essential role of communication between humans and robots, particularly of the non-verbal sort. Not only will robots need to be able to read the faces of humans, but will, in turn, need to have “faces” capable of communicating, themselves:
Merely making a robot smart enough to know it’s being told not to do something is not enough, says [Chris Melhuish of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the UK]: “Safe interaction needs a lot more than speech and language processing on the part of the robot.”
The Bristol team is developing facial interaction routines that make it clearer what a human is can expect of a robot they are cooperating with. For instance, when someone passes something to a robot, its eyes should lock onto to the object being handed over, so the human knows it is taking an interest in it.
In addition, Melhuish suggests the range of robot facial expressions should include one of “bemusement”. That would signal to humans that the robot is unclear about its task, and may be about to perform an unsafe manoeuvre – not grasping a hot cup of drink properly, for example.
You can see examples of the CHRIS (Cooperative Human Robot Interaction Systems) Project’s work, which features several examples of humanoid robots (including the above-pictured iCub), here.
Wearable camera system may aid those with failing memory
In the movie Memento, protagonist Leonard Shelby (portrayed by Guy Pierce) has anterograde amnesia, which prevents him from creating new memories. Shelby is able to cope with his disability through an extensive system of post-it notes, Polaroid photos and tattoos of “facts” he must be reminded of on a regular basis.
While Memento was a stellar work of fiction, it reminded me that millions around the world cope with memory loss due to diseases such as Alzheimer’s. For these individuals and their families, not being able to recall memories greatly impedes their lives. Microsoft has developed a new device called a “Sensecam,” that may lead to technology that helps people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of memory disorders record their day-to-day experiences, even if they can’t physically remember.
The Sensecam takes hundreds of pictures in a short period. When researchers began exploring it as a memory aid a few years ago, they had patients and caregivers look at all the pictures together.
[…]Once the system selects some photos from the hundreds taken, the caregiver winnows down the candidates, adding cues like audio from the voice recorder, verbal narration and brief text captions. The final product is a multimedia slide show on a tablet computer that allows the patient to dig deeper into highlighted parts of some images by tapping on the screen. The first tap plays audio, the second shows captions.
“The design is intended to give the patient the ability to engage actively with the experience instead of simply flipping through some pictures,” said Mr. Lee, the graduate student. Testing the system with the Reznicks and two other couples, he and Dr. Dey found that it helped patients recall events more vividly and with greater confidence than when they simply went through all of the images.
While researchers have experimented with the Sensecam as a memory aid, there are no plans to market it as such. Instead, the manufacturer plans to market the Sensecam as a device that enables wearers to upload photos and video to their favorite social media portals of choice – a “lifeblogging” aid, if you will. This research illustrates, however, that technology in the form of an external memory capture device can play a valuable role in helping to preserve one’s ability to remember events when the built-in, biological standby begins to fail.
Using nanotechnology to destroy colorectal cancer cells
The journal Nanotechnology reports a new method for targeting cancer cells using nanoparticles that destroys cancer cells while using healthy tissue unharmed:
Led by Carl Batt, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Food Science, the researchers synthesized nanoparticles – shaped something like a dumbbell – made of gold sandwiched between two pieces of iron oxide. They then attached antibodies, which target a molecule found only in colorectal cancer cells, to the particles. Once bound, the nanoparticles are engulfed by the cancer cells.
To kill the cells, the researchers use a near-infrared laser, which is a wavelength that doesn’t harm normal tissue at the levels used, but the radiation is absorbed by the gold in the nanoparticles. This causes the cancer cells to heat up and die.
“This is a so-called ’smart’ therapy,” Batt said. “To be a smart therapy, it should be targeted, and it should have some ability to be activated only when it’s there and then kills just the cancer cells.”
Researchers are now working on improving the technology in order to use it in human clinical trials.
Researchers discover how Ritalin increases cognitive function
The drug Ritalin is commonly prescribed for use in treating ADHD, but researchers also know that Ritalin boosts cognitive function in people without the disorder. How? The drug works in two ways. First, Ritalin increases dopamine activity in the brain, which enhances attention and learning. Second, it enhances neural plasticity – “changes in strength of the connections between nerve cells.” Research was published in Nature Neuroscience:
Rats given Ritalin were able to more quickly learn that a combination of signals–a flash of light and sound–meant they could get a sugar water reward. But if the rats were also given a drug to block one type of dopamine receptor, the effect was lost. Treated animals also focused more intently on the task at hand, engaging in less unrelated behavior. Another drug, designed to block a second type of dopamine receptor, blocked Ritalin’s ability to enhance focus.
Researchers say this study will help them to develop more targeted drugs with fewer side effects. It also provides additional evidence for what many college students already know – taking a cognitive enhancement drug can help them perform much better than they would unaided.
From Earth to Mars in six weeks? New engine could make it happen
The biggest barrier to manned exploration of Mars is the time it would take to get there – with current technology (chemical rockets) it would take about eight months. However, a new propulsion technology that uses jets of superheated plasma to propel a craft using “steady, efficient thrust” could cut that time to merely 40 days. Road trip!
A mission trajectory study estimated that a VASIMR-powered spacecraft could reach the red planet within 40 days if it had a 200 megawatt power source. That’s 1,000 times more power than what the current VASIMR prototype will use, although Ad Astra says that VASIMR can scale up to higher power sources.
The real problem rests with current limitations in space power sources. Glover estimates that the Mars mission scenario would need a power source that can produce one kilowatt (kW) of power per kilogram (kg) of mass, or else the spacecraft could never reach the speeds required for a quick trip.
Existing power sources fall woefully short of that ideal. Solar panels have a mass to power ratio of 20 kg/kW. The Pentagon’s DARPA science lab hopes to develop solar panels that can achieve 7 kg/KW, and stretched lens arrays might reach 3 kg/KW, Glover said. That’s good enough for VASIMR to transport cargo around low-Earth orbit and to the moon, but not to fly humans to Mars.
Unfortunately, while we may actually have the propulsion technology to send humans to Mars in a relatively timely manner, we don’t have the power source. Solar panels won’t do the trick, and the proposed power source, a nuclear reactor, is only a concept at this point. Even so, Ad Astra, the company that created VASMIR, has approached commercial spaceflight providers to explore potential launch options.
Where will AI be in 90 years? Experts weigh in
Silicon.com asked leading thinkers in the realm of artificial intelligence where they think AI will be in the year 2100. On the conservative side, we have responses from Noel Sharkey, who sees autonomous cars and more use of robots in medicine. On the more radical side, we have Ray Kurzweil, who believes we will have human-level AI by 2029 and will be exploring beyond our solar system by the year 2100.
With the exception of Kurzweil, however, the other respondents are much less sure about what the year 2100 will hold for humanity. Will we even have machines capable of passing the Turing Test? Will we still be the dominant species?
It’s safe to say humanity will undergo more change in the next century than it has in its entire existence. If Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns is even somewhat accurate, however, it will be difficult to predict what, exactly, that change will look like.
Control your avatar in Second Life – with your mind!
This video of someone controlling Second Life through a brain-computer interface looks like fun, but surely it’s no brain controlled pinball.
NASA finds “at least” 600 million tons of water ice on Moon
We’ve known that the Moon definitively contains water ice since late last year when NASA crashed a probe into the south pole and measured the resulting plume of debris. This evening NASA unveiled findings that measured the presence of water ice on the north pole, and we learned that ice is abundant there to the tune of at least 600 million tons:
“The emerging picture from the multiple measurements and resulting data of the instruments on lunar missions indicates that water creation, migration, deposition and retention are occurring on the moon,” said Paul Spudis, principal investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. “The new discoveries show the moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought.”
During the past year, the Mini-SAR mapped the moon’s permanently-shadowed polar craters that aren’t visible from Earth. The radar uses the polarization properties of reflected radio waves to characterize surface properties. Results from the mapping showed deposits having radar characteristics similar to ice.
“After analyzing the data, our science team determined a strong indication of water ice, a finding which will give future missions a new target to further explore and exploit,” said Jason Crusan, program executive for the Mini-RF Program for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate in Washington.
The presence of abundant water ice on the Moon makes it all the more feasible for humans to set up a long-term presence there, enabling potential colonists to create oxygen and hydrogen, as well enabling them to avoid having to ship water for basic human needs, i.e. drinking and washing, from Earth.
Computer gives Roger Ebert his voice back
World-famous movie critic Roger Ebert lost his ability to speak, eat or drink when he was treated for thyroid cancer and had his jaw removed in 2006. Now, a Scottish company called CereProc has literally given Ebert his voice back via software that uses old recordings of his voice to determine speech patterns and how he would pronounce certain words, and then used this information to re-create his voice (which, Ebert notes, is currently in “beta”):
Before I lost my voice due to cancer-related surgery, I’d recorded commentary tracks for some movies on DVD: “Citizen Kane,” “Casablanca,” “Floating Weeds,” “Dark City” and, ah, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.” These tracks had been recorded separately from the movies, so they could be edited to fit scenes. They might be “pure” audio. I asked two friends of mine, Ronnie Sass of Warner Bros. and Kim Hendrickson of the Criterion Collection, if they still had the original digital recordings. They rummaged in warehouses and found they did. So did New Line and 20th Century-Fox, studios for which I’d also recorded commentary tracks.
This began a back-and-forth process with CereProc, which had to transcribe every recording with perfect accuracy so they could locate every word. The “normal person” may use 5,000 words, not all of them on the same day. A college professor may use 15,000. Shakespeare used more than 25,000, but he was making up a lot of them as he went along.
Anyway, CereProc didn’t need to hear me speaking a specific word in order for my “voice” to say it. They needed lots of words to determine the general idea of how I might say a word. They transcribed and programmed and tweaked and fiddled, and early this February, sent me the files for a beta version of my voice. I played it for Chaz, and she said, yes, she could tell it was me. For one thing it knew exactly how I said “I.”
Ebert will be debuting his new speaking voice, which he’s dubbed “Roger, Jr.,” on the Oprah Winfrey Show tomorrow, March 2.
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