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Scientists have developed a device that can read minds by detecting people's brainwaves

Ian Johnstone
The Independent
Tue, 18 Apr 2017 03:04 UTC
EEG device reads minds via brainwaves

The new technology may enable handicapped people, who have lost the ability to speak, to communicate again. An 'easily operated' machine linked to a smartphone could be ready within five years
A device that can read people's minds by detecting their brainwaves has been developed in a breakthrough that could eventually enable people with "locked-in syndrome" to communicate.

The system was only partially effective with a 90 per cent success rate when trying to recognise numbers from zero to nine and a 61 per cent rate for single syllables in Japanese, the researchers said.

But, nonetheless, a statement about the research issued by the Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan said it showed that an effective device to read people's thoughts and relay them to others was possible in the "near future".

They even suggested an "easily operated" device with a smartphone app could be ready in just five years.
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Microscope 1

Scientists find living specimen of legendary giant shipworm in the Philippines


RT
Tue, 18 Apr 2017 09:44 UTC
Giant shipworm
© unews.utah.edu
The truth behind the centuries-old legend of the giant shipworm has finally been confirmed by scientists, who got up close and personal with the elusive, sulfur-feasting creature for the first time.

A team of international researchers examined the first living giant shipworm in the Philippines, throwing some light on the mysterious Kuphus polythalamia species - the longest bivalve mollusc in the world, reaching up to 5 feet (1.52 meters) in length.

The bizarre-looking animal, encased in a tusk-like shell, may be the stuff of nightmares for many, but its discovery offers scientists a unique opportunity to unravel the secrets of the rare specimen.


The shells are fairly common, but we have never had access to the animal living inside," lead investigator and director of the Ocean Genome Legacy Center at Northeastern University, Daniel Distel said.
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Eye 1

Corneal transplant: Lab-grown cells could refurbish diseased or damaged eyes

Lisa M. Krieger
mercurynews.com
Mon, 17 Apr 2017 17:26 UTC
cells rebuild eyes
© Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group.
Dr. David DiGiusto, director of Stanford's new Laboratory for Cell and Gene Medicine in Palo Alto. The university's cell manufacturing facility generates thousands of corneal cells, as well as and other specialized cells.
A Stanford research team has created a potentially powerful new way to fix damaged corneas — a major source of vision problems and blindness.

Millions of new eye cells are being grown in a Palo Alto lab, enlisting one of medicine's most important and promising new tools: refurbishing diseased and damaged tissue with healthy new cells.

"One of the exciting possibilities of this cellular approach is that one donor cornea," which contributes a few parent cells, "can generate enough cells to treat tens or hundreds of patients," said lead researcher Dr. Jeffrey Goldberg, professor and chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

About 100,000 corneal transplants are done annually in the United States — but they require surgery with donated corneas from cadavers. The procedure fails nearly a third of the time, and there aren't enough high-quality donor corneas to go around.

Other scientists have been trying to grow full corneas from scratch, attaching a fragile film of cells to a membrane. That's a challenging bioengineering problem.
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Rocket

Possible joint Russia-US mission to Venus takes shape


RT
Sun, 16 Apr 2017 14:34 UTC
planet
© NASA
A proposed joint mission to Venus could feature a Russian rocket and orbital module alongside a US "atmospheric plane" and durable surface probes, a top Russian scientist says.

The proposed joint mission, dubbed Venus-D, is taking shape, in which Russia's Roscosmos space agency would provide an orbital and landing module, alongside a rocket to deliver them to Venus, while NASA would provide atmospheric probes that could survive the planet's extreme conditions, the head of the Planetary Atmospheric Spectrometry Laboratory in the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ludmila Zasova, told TASS.

Venus, which has an extremely hot and hazardous environment, is a "natural laboratory to study the greenhouse effect," Zasova said. Research on Venus could help understand the effect better and perhaps prevent it from going to extremes on Earth.
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Music

Paramusical ensemble: Neuroscience can now curate music based on your brainwaves - not your music taste

Nona Tepper
Quartz
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 17:27 UTC
paramusical ensemble
© Reuters/Michaela Rehle
Play that funky music.
Companies and composers have begun using software to make music customized to your brainwaves. Soon you will be able to plug in your headphones, lean back in your chair, and relax to a playlist so synchronized with your brain's chemistry that it increases your productivity, sleep quality, and even fights anxiety.

The frequency at which your brain resonates defines your state of mind. Need to chill out? Try alpha activity. Or what about a pre-workout pep-up? Pop on some beta waves.

As consumer desire for personalized information and outcomes increases, the ability to listen to music that is literally in tune with your brain will provide a whole new business opportunity in the world of music streaming.

"You've got Spotify looking at your choices of song and providing suggestions on things you selected before now," says musician Eduardo Miranda. "If you have something that is more connected to your own biology, it's another way of providing services that may be more personalized."
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Meteor

Asteroid as big as the Rock of Gibraltar to streak past earth on April 19


Phys.org
Fri, 14 Apr 2017 00:00 UTC
asteroid april 19 2017

The earth has asteroids whizzing past it several times a week but these are smaller in size that the one expected on April 19
An asteroid as big as the Rock of Gibraltar will streak past Earth on April 19 at a safe but uncomfortably close distance, according to astronomers.

"Although there is no possibility for the asteroid to collide with our planet, this will be a very close approach for an asteroid this size," NASA said in a statement.

Dubbed 2014-JO25 and roughly 650 metres (2,000 feet) across, the asteroid will come within 1.8 million kilometres (1.1 million miles) of Earth, less than five times the distance to the Moon.

It will pass closest to our planet after having looped around the Sun. 2014-J25's will then continue on past Jupiter before heading back toward the centre of our Solar System.

Smaller asteroids whizz by Earth several times a week. But the last time one at least this size came as close was in 2004, when Toutatis—five kilometres (3.1 miles) across—passed within four lunar distances.

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Satellite

UAE launches space program to boost colonization of Mars by 2021


RT
Thu, 13 Apr 2017 18:10 UTC
UAE space probe drawing
© Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre MBRSC / YouTube
The UAE has launched an ambitious space program aimed at sending a probe to Mars by 2021 and settling the Red Planet by 2117. The kingdom's rulers see the hi-tech venture as a sign of hope and inspiration for the entire Arab world.

Until recently, only a handful of leading world powers funded and promoted space exploration programs, including the US, Russia, China, Japan and the EU. Other nations, especially those in the Middle East, have long been excluded from global scientific mainstream, but now the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has joined the race.

On Wednesday, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, prime minister of the UAE and emir of Dubai, and Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, inaugurated the national space program at the Mohammad Bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC), local media reported.
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Water

Solar-powered device can harvest fresh water from air even in dry environments

Fiona Macdonald
Science-Alert
Thu, 13 Apr 2017 00:00 UTC
desert, water in desert
© John Lund / Getty
When it comes to future challenges, one of the biggest will be water scarcity - on a warming planet we're going to have plenty of seawater, but not enough fresh, clean water in the right places for everybody to drink.

And while a lot of research has focussed on desalination, a team of scientists have now come up with another possible solution - a device that pulls fresh water out of thin air, even in places with humidity as low as 20 percent. All it needs is sunlight.

It might sound too good to be true, but so far the research is solid. Called the 'solar-powered harvester', the device was created by teams from MIT and the University of California, Berkeley, using a special type of material known as a metal-organic framework (MOF).

To be clear, it's only in the prototype phase right now and has been tested in pretty limited situations, but the results so far have just been published in Science.

"This is a major breakthrough in the long-standing challenge of harvesting water from the air at low humidity," said one of the researchers, Omar Yaghi from UC Berkeley.
      Read More...
Telescope

For first time ever, astronomers image black hole using observatories on three continents to form telescope array


Sputnik
Thu, 13 Apr 2017 23:26 UTC
black hole photo combined telescopes

For the first time in our history, we have the technological capacity to observe black holes in detail.
For the first time ever, astronomers have successfully imaged a black hole by training eight telescopes on three continents on it, creating a virtual telescope as large as the Earth itself in the process.

Every image you've ever seen of a black hole was nothing more than a illustration. Black holes eat light (along with everything else) that comes too close to them, meaning they give off virtually no light of their own. The closest black holes that we know of are pretty small by black hole standards: V616 Monocerotis is 3,000 light years from Earth and is about 9 to 13 times the size of our sun.

The bigger the black hole, the easier it'd be to image. Supermassive black holes are often surrounded by accretion disks, a ring of matter orbiting a large celestial object. (Saturn's rings are probably the most famous example of an accretion disk.) These disks can include superheated plasma jets, and those give off a good amount of light - but they also obscure our view of the black hole itself.
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Black Magic

Running with scissors: The potential dark side of reality technology

Brian Crecente
Polygon
Fri, 07 Apr 2017 13:00 UTC
virtual reality
What if virtual reality wasn't just a new way to play games or watch movies? What if the technology wasn't just creating new methods of communication, of medical treatment, of military training?

What if virtual reality was used in the pursuit of mayhem?

Much has been said about the positives of technology that can reshape reality or even create a new one, but last month two respected academic researchers held a talk at South by Southwest in Austin to explore not just those positives, but also the potential negatives of reality technology.

"This is a scene from a movie from the 1940s called Gaslight," Todd Richmond told the packed room, pointing to a screen showing a man and a woman standing by an old gaslight in a home. "How many people know what gaslighting is? So the term gaslighting comes from when lights used to be gas fueled. And it's a way of driving someone into mental distress by manipulating their environment without telling them and then denying that it's being manipulated. So the classic, the gaslight lamp lighting is that you slowly turn down the lights on your spouse because you're trying to drive your spouse nuts. Your spouse says, 'Is it getting darker?' And you say, 'No, I don't know what you're talking about.' And if you do that enough over time, you would begin to freak people out.

"So is VR the perfect platform for this? The answer is, yeah, if you're going to use it for that."
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